The CTO Circle Newsletter · June 17, 2026
This is Marco from CTO Circle. My goal is to deliver the most value in the fewest words.
Let me know how to improve. I respond to every reply.
In this issue
Next week's CTO lunch, why senior technical leaders are moving closer to building, Cursor's GitHub alternative, community reads, and open engineering roles.
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Next community events
June 22 · Itnig, Barcelona
Last CTO Circle gathering in Barcelona before summer
60 seats, short talks from engineering leaders, and a private open debate with CTOs and engineering leaders.
Ilya Zayats, CTO at Factorial: From Magic to Harness — Building an AI Agent for Factorial.
Victor Tuson, engineering leadership coach: Everyone wants to be reliable, but most fail to achieve it.
The Open Debate: private, off the record, no cameras. We vote on the topics that worry us most, then talk them through candidly and behind closed doors.
Request your seat. Sponsored by NVIDIA, Microsoft, Tinybird and Auth0.
Short opinionated trend
Member of Technical Staff
Some time ago, a tweet went viral in tech circles. Several CTOs and senior technical leaders were joining Anthropic as Members of Technical Staff: not necessarily ICs in the traditional sense, but definitely much closer to the actual building.
For years, the traditional engineering path was clear: individual contributor, staff, management, director, VP, and eventually CTO. As experience and context grew, impact usually moved to higher management layers.
AI changes part of that equation. Companies still need direction, coordination, prioritization and accountability, but organizations can probably become flatter. Shopify and Block are already pushing for fewer layers, more ownership and more AI leverage.
Individual contributor does not necessarily mean lower seniority, lower compensation or less impact. It means output is measured more directly by what you can create, influence and ship. A very senior IC with the right context can drive outcomes that previously required a team, a roadmap and several layers of coordination. That is why the CTO → IC move might make sense.
News, reads & launches
Cursor is reportedly building Origin, its GitHub-like bet on owning more of the software workflow.
SpaceX is acquiring Cursor for $60B in stock, one of the most aggressive consolidation moves in AI developer tooling.
Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, only for the models to be caught in a government fight after a reported export-control concern.
Salesforce is acquiring Fin for $3.6B, adding a proven AI customer-support agent to Agentforce.
Agentic code review. AI can catch more issues, but review still depends on understanding intent, trade-offs, architecture, and whether the code should exist.
Software is not a single-player game. AI may make engineers faster, but great software still depends on context, collaboration, review, communication, and good team decisions.
From the community
A discussion in the AI channel covered browser automation for AI agents, comparing Browser Use, Browserbase, Skyvern, Cloudflare Browser Rendering, local Chrome/CDP setups, QA tools, stealth mode, proxies, pricing, and reliability.
Another thread explored how much value teams can squeeze out of Claude and ChatGPT subscription plans, comparing token usage, coding workloads, weekly limits, and whether these products are priced sustainably.
Sergio Vissinoni shared Is AI profitable?, a simple way to look at the revenue, losses, and economics behind the current AI boom.
New here? Join the Slack community and introduce yourself.
Open engineering leadership roles
That's it for today. Let me know whether this issue gave you enough value, reply and tell me what to cut or add.
Best,
Marco