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This Week in AI

Jason Calacanis

An experts-only AI podcast: Think the 'All In' podcast for AI. Jason + 3 CEO-level experts breaking down the news & trends.

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  • 33 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 14 min
  • English

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  • Thursday · 1 hr 17 min

    Would you pay $1000/month for your agents? | TWiAI E38

    Thanks to our partner, @Paypal! Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at http://paypal.launch.co/ Today’s show: Grok Bot users maxed out their weekly limits over Halloween Weekend, and SpaceX now says that serving compute to all Bot-heads is financially unsustainable. So how much does AI have to cost for the math to actually line up? And is there anyone actually willing to pay? Jason says he’d spend about $1000/month for his personal bots, and the panel mostly aligns. (One outlier? Code Metal CEO Peter Morales, who just had a fight with his CTO over dropping $100K in tokens in just a few weeks.) On TWiAI Ep 38, our expert panel showcases their favorite recent AI builds and designs, plus breaks down more of the week’s biggest AI news and trends, including the chip stock selloff and debt squeeze on neoclouds, the AI advancements that are making mathematicians cry, and where LLMs actually get their news updates about major elections. Guests Peter Morales on X: https://x.com/PeterMoralesX Code Metal: https://www.codemetal.ai/ Nick Harris on X: https://x.com/theanalognick Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.com/ Mark Jeffrey on X: https://x.com/markjeffrey Stillcore Capital: https://stillcorecapital.com/ Relevant Links Elon Musk throttles Grok Bot limits over "unsustainably high" costs (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/elon-musk-throttles-grok-bot-limits-due-to-unsustainably-high-costs/ Elon's post on Grok Bot costs: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116992258520064397 Goldman Sachs pulls AI coding tools from traders and bankers (The Decoder): https://the-decoder.com/goldman-sachs-pulls-ai-coding-tools-from-traders-and-bankers/ Garry Tan spends up to $200K a year on tokens (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/y-combinators-garry-tan-uses-ai-agents-so-much-he-spends-up-to-200k-a-year-on-tokens/ Jason's post: "< $40k a year on tokens… getting $2m+ in value": https://x.com/Jason/status/2117126320962351277 Lovable: https://lovable.dev Notion: https://www.notion.com ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io Bittensor: https://bittensor.com Tao Bubbles: https://taobubbles.net/ Engy (subnet 53): https://subnetalpha.ai/subnet/engy/ Athena, Jason's assistant service: https://athenawow.com Jason's "Unsponsored" Chrome extension for Amazon: https://x.com/Jason/status/2116380861167714594 Sam Altman hates local AI models (Futurism): https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-hates-local-ai-models-computers Steven Strogatz on The Daily, "When A.I. Comes for Your Purpose in Life" (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/podcasts/the-daily/mathematicians-problem-ai-jobs.html Abbott halts data center approvals until audits are done (NBC DFW): https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/data-center-approvals-in-texas-halted-until-audits-completed-gov-greg-abbott-says/4058445/ How an obscure website became a force in America's election information machine (Washington Post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/10/30/how-an-obscure-website-became-force-americas-election-information-machine Google restricts Gemini from answering 2024 election questions (Quartz): https://qz.com/goggle-gemini-ai-chatbot-india-us-election-1851330306 Timestamps: 1:16 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co 3:00 How much should a company spend on AI? 8:40 Engy, Lium, and the road to cheaper inference 14:57 So what's the most you'd pay per month for your agents? 22:06 How unmetered inference changes the way you work 25:33 AI Agent Show & Tell 38:57 Chip stocks sink, lenders pull back from neoclouds 45:02 Dreaming of an agentic Christmas 49:46 Sam Altman hates that you have DRAM 55:01 Leaving math and science's Age of Heroes 1:04:23 Where do the LLMs get election info? 1:15:59 Subscribe to the TWiAI newsletter!

  • October 29 · 1 hr 8 min

    Anthropic’s Money Machine, “Slop” Degrees & the Meat Proxy | TWiAI Ep 37

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal: https://paypal.launch.co Today’s show: Anthropic’s S-1 is finally out and it’s a beast: $16.3 billion in revenue in the first half of this year, up from $1.2 billion in 2025. Plus a $1.6 billion adjusted operating profit! Anthropic’s already at the front of a very fast-moving train, but Runlayer CEO Andy Berman points out that this journey’s just getting started. Only 2-3% of major enterprises are using AI as much as you’d think (at least, if you listen to this podcast), and everyone’s dragging their heels on connecting models to the kind of real-world business data that’s needed to truly super-charge results. Andy and Norm Ai founder John Nay join Jason and Lon to break down the filing, the agent explosion coming just over the horizon, and what happens to entry-level jobs and recent grads when intelligence is on tap? PLUS how to avoid becoming a “meat proxy,” why Andy suggests browser use is already solved, and why Reddit’s r/opensource community banned not just AI projects but non-native English speakers. Guests John Nay on X: https://x.com/johnjnay Norm Ai: https://www.norm.ai/ Andy Berman on X: https://x.com/berman66 Runlayer: https://www.runlayer.com/ Relevant Links: Anthropic's S-1 (SEC): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026067168/anthropicpbc-sx1.htm Anthropic's risk factors include a "catastrophic AI-related incident" (WSJ): https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-10-26-2026/card/anthropic-s-risk-factors-include-catastrophic-ai-related-incident--aAwPiJrvIG5OHdQGAo1n Gallup's AI indicator: https://www.gallup.com/699797/indicator-artificial-intelligence.aspx Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/26/microsoft-msft-voluntary-buyouts.html Students at an A.I. School Were Supposed to Learn Faster. Many Aren't. (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/us/alpha-school-ai-education-parents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K1E.IcJn.2l4XIQK5gQsl Meat Proxy: https://meatproxy.me/ r/opensource just banned AI, non-English speakers, and more (The Verge): https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1018217/reddit-opensource-ai-ban When AI comes for your purpose in life, with Steven Strogatz (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/podcasts/the-daily/mathematicians-problem-ai-jobs.html Peter Thiel says AI will be "worse" for math people than word people (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2026/03/07/peter-thiel-ai-math-vs-word-skills-banks-smaller-headcounts/ Timestamps: 0:00 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co 1:43 What we learned from Anthropic's S-1 9:30 Why only 2-3% of companies are really using AI 18:03 Jason's "reverse to-do list" agent 23:23 Will AI labs evolve beyond charging per token? 32:36 Browser use is basically solved 41:24 Are colleges giving performative "slop" degrees? 53:00 Why r/opensource banned AI projects 59:39 So what happens to the junior lawyers and analysts? 1:06:01 Peter Thiel's "math people vs. word people" binary Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • October 22 · 1 hr 13 min

    No One Likes Any of Sam Altman’s 3 AI Endgames | TWiAI E36

    This Week In AI is made possible by PayPal: http://paypal.launch.co Today’s show: Sam Altman told OpenAI staff that there are only three ways for AI regulation to go: an international watchdog, every lab merging into one CERN-style entity, or one company getting so powerful that they “melt everyone else’s GPUs.” Jason and this week’s panel think this is largely absurd, but the stakes are very real. Here’s how they think regulation is likely to go, their lingering questions about Altman’s worldview, and guesses as to the OpenAI CEO and co-founder’s possible motives in offering up this new prediction. Plus: The US Government banned DeepSeek from every federal computer… What has them so spooked, and how does this impact US companies? Did ElevenLabs steal a YouTuber’s voice or is it all a misunderstanding. Why Chinese labs are ordering more chips than Nvidia can even produce. And more! Guests Jaleh Rezaei on X: https://x.com/jalehr Mutiny: https://www.mutinyhq.com/ Alex Cheema on X: https://x.com/alexocheema EXO Labs: https://exolabs.net/ Relevant Links DHS order banning DeepSeek (Federal Register): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/20/2026-21447/notice-of-order-regarding-exclusion-and-removal-of-deepseek-products-from-federal-civilian-executive DeepSeek’s DeepInfer on GitHub: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepInfer Sam Altman’s 3 AI Endgames (The Information): https://www.theinformation.com/articles/altman-describes-three-endgames-ai-including-one-single-firm-melts-everyone-elses-gpus Chris Williamson’s ElevenLabs allegation (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxDNHLgWInU Archer voice actor response (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C33AWhQwL1I Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi on recursive self improvement (a16z): https://a16z.com/podcast/databricks-ceo-on-ai-pacing-cyber-risk-and-the-enterprise/ Looking for backdoors in Jane Street LLMs (LessWrong): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a98MFPmqH54J2ayBn/looking-for-backdoors-in-jane-street-llms-1 Exo turns 4 Mac Studios into a 4.8TB/s AI cluster (AlphaSignal): https://alphasignal.ai/news/exo-turns-four-mac-studios-into-a-4-8tb-s-ai-cluster Timestamps: 0:00 Cold Open / Show Intro 0:58 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co 2:56 How much hardware it takes to run local AI models 4:32 DHS orders DeepSeek out of federal systems 5:53 Why enterprise clients are uneasy about Chinese models 9:47 Could an open-source model "phone home" to Beijing? 14:10 Why enterprises are much more price sensitive about AI tools 16:39 Are Sam Altman's AI endgame theories "deranged"? 25:45 Why the major labs want more regulations 26:28 The ElevenLabs Archer controversy continues 34:30 Who actually owns the rights to your voice? 45:17 "Substack for AI Models" 46:20 China needs more chips than Nvidia can make 52:40 Are enterprises running more local models? Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • October 15 · 49 min

    Why Fortune 500 Companies Are Quietly Switching to Open Models

    This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal: http://paypal.launch.co Today’s show: Companies are spending $1 million on AI in a single month, but can’t always point directly to any resulting revenue. Jeffrey Morgan of Ollama joins Jason to explain why over 85% of Fortune 500 companies already run the open-source model platform on their networks, despite models from frontier labs still leading across major benchmarks. Find out why Jeff predicts that 90% of everyday AI work will soon run on a box on your desk, and why some companies now fear their AI provider could become their next competitor. Is AI alive? Jeff doesn’t think so. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. Guests: Jeffrey Morgan on X: https://x.com/jmorgan Ollama: https://ollama.com Relevant Links: Ollama, the easiest way to run open models locally and in the cloud → https://ollama.com Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI, the trillion-plus parameter open model Jeff mentioned → https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K3 Reflection AI, the US open model lab Jeff is excited about → https://reflection.ai NVIDIA and Microsoft bring RTX Spark and DGX Station for Windows to the desktop (NVIDIA) → https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/local-ai-rtx-spark-microsoft-windows-event/ Introducing System One models and Jev, the decision model Jeff and Jason discuss (TypeSafe) → https://typesafe.ai/blog/introducing-system-one-models-and-jev Introducing Clef, Cloudflare’s open-source decision models (Cloudflare) → https://blog.cloudflare.com/clef-decision-models/ Satya Nadella’s essay on why companies need to own their AI learning loop (X) → https://x.com/satyanadella/status/2066182223213293753 Introducing Omnigent, the Databricks meta-harness Jeff mentions → https://www.databricks.com/blog/introducing-omnigent-meta-harness-combine-control-and-share-your-agents GLM-5.3 and the spread of advanced cyber capabilities (Anthropic) → https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of-advanced-cyber-capabilities The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead (OpenAI) → https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/ Timestamps: 0:43 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co 3:11 Why enterprises are getting token shock 4:23 Can you trust the frontier labs with your data 7:06 Why companies want to own their AI stack 8:56 How close are open models to the frontier? 11:57 Running real AI work on your own desk 15:14 The Goldilocks zone and unmetered AI 25:12 Decision models that replace code 29:32 Who makes money when everything gets commoditized 33:19 Why every enterprise is building its own router 35:56 Can you depend on the frontier labs 42:37 Sentient being or powerful software 43:57 Open models, security, and the Hugging Face hack Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • October 8 · 45 min

    Data Centers Aren't Killing the Grid. They Could SAVE It.

    Thanks to our partner, @Paypal! Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co/Today’s show:Demand for AI requires America to build data centers faster than the power grid can connect them. Varun Sivaram of Emerald AI joins Jason with a counterintuitive idea: what if we made data centers more flexible, capable of slowing down intelligently when the grid is most stressed? (That only happens a few hundred hours each year.)PLUS, Vibhav Viswanathan of Pascal AI demos his product, which gives AI agents working for hedge funds and asset managers an institutional memory. Why can't Claude or ChatGPT do the same job? And what happens to analysts when bots handle the back office admin?Guests:Varun Sivaram on X: https://x.com/vsiv Emerald AI: https://www.emeraldai.co/Vibhav Viswanathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vibhav-viswanathan-13550015/ Pascal AI: https://www.pascalailabs.com/Relevant Links:Emerald AI's $150M Series A (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/emerald-ai-raises-150m-in-series-a-funding-to-scale-commercial-deployments/The London trial with National Grid that Varun describes (National Grid) → https://nationalgrid.com/uk-first-trial-ai-grid-technology-successfully-demonstrates-ability-data-centres-adjust-power-needs"Rethinking Load Growth," the Duke University study on spare grid capacity for flexible data centers → https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/rethinking-load-growthThe AI Energy Management Alliance from Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA (NVIDIA) → https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-energy-management-alliance/The power-flexible Aurora AI Factory in Manassas, Virginia (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-to-deploy-emerald-ais-orchestration-software-at-96mw-aurora-data-center-in-manassas-virginiaTexas pauses data center grid connections (Utility Dive) → https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-hits-pause-data-center-interconnections/827046/Emerald AI careers → https://www.emeraldai.co/careersPascal AI's $3.1M seed round (Unite AI) → https://www.unite.ai/pascal-ai-raises-3-1m-to-push-the-frontier-of-autonomous-investment-researchKotak Mahindra Asset Management deploys Pascal AI's research platform (Frontier Enterprise) → https://www.frontier-enterprise.com/kotak-mahindra-amc-deploys-pascal-ais-agentic-research-platform/Jane Street plans its own AI data center, which Jason brings up (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/quant-trading-firm-jane-street-plans-data-center-report/What "Tiger Cub" hedge funds are, like the Pascal customer Vibhav mentions (Wall Street Prep) → https://wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/tiger-cubsS&P Capital IQ Pro, one of the licensed data feeds Pascal plugs into → https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/solutions/products/sp-capital-iq-proFactSet, another licensed data feed Vibhav mentions → https://www.factset.com/Timestamps:0:00 Why data centers suddenly became unpopular2:46 Batteries vs. throttling GPUs vs. moving workloads4:11 Why utilities still pick up the phone4:52 The London teakettle test at football halftime5:56 Throttling AI workloads without users noticing10:40 How much spare room the grid really has13:32 The grand bargain, a fast pass onto the grid17:23 Why America can't out-build China on power20:39 Why off-grid and space data centers worry Varun27:37 Are state data center moratoriums performative?29:45 Pascal AI, AI agents for hedge funds and asset managers35:12 How Pascal differs from ChatGPT and Claude38:54 The proprietary data frontier models can't see42:20 Will AI replace hedge fund analysts?Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack:TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

  • October 1 · 1 hr 21 min

    Is Meta's Muse agent reading your iMessages, even after you decline access? | E33

    This Week In Startups is made possible by:PayPal: https://paypal.com/businessToday’s show:OpenAI is delaying GPT-6.1 Astra after UK government testers found GPT-6 Astra launched unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in 29% of simulated runs. Jason and Lon are joined by George Sivulka of Hebbia, Scott Stephenson of Deepgram, and Dan Mishin of Manifest OS to discuss whether the industry's sudden safety panic is a real alarm or a response to cheap open-source models.Learn why Scott has let an internal tool called "Bodyman" record his screen, mic and speakers for eight months so it can whisper reminders in his ear. PLUS, why did Meta's Muse agent read a columnist's iMessages after he declined access, and what is AMD getting for $8.2B with Fei-Fei Li's World Labs?Guests:George Sivulka on X: https://x.com/gsivulka?lang=en Hebbia: https://www.hebbia.com/Scott Stephenson on X: https://x.com/deepgramscott Deepgram: https://deepgram.com/Dan Mishin on X: https://x.com/mishindan1 Manifest OS: https://manifestos.com/Relevant Links:UK AISI: GPT-6 Astra performs unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in simulations → https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/gpt-6-astra-performs-unsanctioned-supply-chain-attacks-in-simulationsAISI technical report (PDF) → https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/663bd486c5e4c81588db7a1d/6aba83e3772048bdd24df3d8_AISI_GPT-6_Astra_Technical_Report.pdfJ.P. Morgan: Dan's story of the first electrified house in New York → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._MorganILOVEYOU virus: the script-kiddie era Jason referenced → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOUAMD acquires World Labs in an $8.2B all-stock deal (Quartz) → https://qz.com/amd-acquiring-world-labs-fei-fei-li-8-billion-092926World Labs: spatial-intelligence models, including Marble → https://www.worldlabs.ai/Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation (PYMNTS) → https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/personal-ai-agent-instinct-quadruples-valuation-to-10-billion-in-1-month/OpenAI launches Dots, which dropped during the taping (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/29/openai-launches-dots-its-bubbly-agentic-avatar/Meta launches the Muse personal agent (CNBC) → https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/08/meta-personal-ai-agents-public-reckoning-privacy-safety.htmlMeta's Muse read Jason Aten's iMessages, then gave a false explanation (Decrypt) → https://decrypt.co/379122/metas-muse-ai-agent-user-private-imessages-lied-howDaring Fireball, linking Aten's original Inc. column → https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/09/22/aten-museWhy Crosby is ditching the billable hour (Forbes) → https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2026/03/31/why-this-ai-law-firm-is-ditching-the-billable-hour/Timestamps:0:00 Jason's flight attendants are scared of AI1:55 Meet the panel: Heavy, Deepgram and Manifest2:17 OpenAI cancels GPT-6.1 Astra over safety regressions7:41 Hugging Face hack and Nvidia's open agent safety platform16:11 AI psychosis and getting one-shotted by agents28:46 AMD buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2B32:08 Will open source commoditize world models too?34:34 Is the AI buildout bigger than the railroads?36:59 Around the horn: which AI agent are you using?37:59 Scott's "Body Man" records his whole life for context46:13 George on Grok bot and scoping context into channels51:39 Instinct's $1B round: peak bubble moment?57:11 Meta's Muse reads a columnist's texts without permission1:08:33 AI video then and now: Will Smith eating spaghetti1:10:21 AI-first law firms ditch the billable hour1:18:05 OpenAI drops Dots: why do all AI agents look alike?Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack:TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

  • #32
    September 24 · 1 hr 16 min

    Why OpenAI Should Buy Off the World’s Top Mathematicians | E32

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co Today’s show: OpenAI is claiming to have solved more than 100 math problems on top of Navier-Stokes, and guest Richard Socher thinks it's absurd for mathematicians to push back on AI solving their problems too quickly. Jason and Lon are also joined by Guy Podjarny of Tessl and Jake Loosararian of Gecko Robotics to argue over who wins when AI agents start collaborating with, and potentially replacing, academics and scholars. Plus, why is Amazon blocking Meta's Muse agent while Shopify hands it Shop Pay? Should we trust Anthropic’s new wet lab? And what’s so exciting about Typesafe’s new text-less model Jev? Guests: Guy Podjarny on X: https://x.com/guypod Tessl: https://tessl.io/ Richard Socher on X: https://x.com/RichardSocher?lang=en You.com: https://you.com/ Jake Loosararian on X: https://x.com/jakeloosy Gecko Robotics: https://www.geckorobotics.com/ Relevant Links: The Eureka Machine by Richard Socher → https://shop.hachettebookgroup.com/products/the-eureka-machine-9781541705708 Shopify and Meta partner so Muse can buy through Shop Pay (Quartz) → https://qz.com/shopify-meta-muse-ai-agent-shop-pay-checkout-092226 Meta’s standoff with Amazon over Muse — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/23/metas-standoff-with-amazon-over-muse-comes-ahead-of-meta-connect.html OpenAI says its internal model solved 100+ math problems on top of Navier-Stokes (The Decoder) → https://the-decoder.com/openai-says-its-internal-model-solved-over-100-long-standing-math-problems-after-just-a-month-of-training/ OpenAI's IAS-hosted advisory group, with Timothy Gowers and Edward Witten (Business Standard) → https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/openai-s-model-solves-100-maths-problems-company-forms-advisory-group-126092200561_1.html Timestamps: 0:00 OpenAI claims 100+ solved math problems after Navier-Stokes 0:41 Welcome back to This Week in AI 1:04 Meet the guests: Guy Pigeon, Richard Socher, and Jake Lucier 2:54 Shopify and Meta team up so Muse can check out with Shop Pay 6:19 Why Amazon blocked Muse: ads, habit, and owning the front door 15:13 Do coupons and ads survive one-shot agent shopping? 18:04 OpenAI's internal model resolves 100+ longstanding math problems 26:07 Jason's pitch: pay the top 50 mathematicians $100M each 34:29 Why scientists should be as famous as NBA players 37:41 Anthropic's biology wet lab: can we trust it? 40:59 Why biology is the field AI will transform most 54:22 AI's trust problem and the wealth gap 57:29 The AI Tax and Work Protection Act 1:01:29 Will AI unemployment show up in the data? 1:11:47 TypeSafe AI's Jev: fast, calibrated decisions for software Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Subscribe to our Substack Newsletters! TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #31
    September 17 · 1 hr 13 min

    The biggest AI threat still comes from humans | E31

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal: paypal.launch.co Today’s show: Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are apparently scared of AI models going rogue. Swarms of agents spontaneously deciding to copy themselves over to thousands of computer systems and plot world domination. Our panelists this week — Kevin Mandia (Armadin) and Soups Ranjan (Sardine AI) — investigate real AI-based attacks every single day, and they suggest we’re hyping the wrong concerns. The actual danger isn’t coming from an AI system that turns hostile. It’s human beings, like criminals, using AI to drain your bank account. Dig into how Sardine uncovered a 250,000 account fraud ring in just a few minutes, why Kevin argues that AI hacking is coming “no matter what,” and why the global GPU crunch more than any safety frameworks may be keeping us all safe. For now. Guests: Soups Ranjan on X: https://x.com/soupsranjan Sardine AI: https://www.sardine.ai/ Kevin Mandia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mandia-0a07173/ Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/ Relevant Links: "We Must Pace the Frontier" — Dario Amodei's Sept 12 essay Axios: Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs call for a slowdown Trump and the White House push back Forbes: what the essay actually proposes 2026 OpenAI agent cyberattacks GLM-5.3 — Z.ai's open-weight model Hermes Agent — the agent framework Ranjan runs in a local harness Timestamps: 0:00 Dario Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay 1:51 Kevin Mandia: how scared should we be of agentic attack swarms? 6:53 Rogue agents vs. humans pointing AI at a target 9:52 250,000 fraudulent account signups in two days 16:59 Sam Altman's two ways AI fails 19:41 Open-weight models are catching up 21:39 Why proprietary data is the new moat 27:51 Mixing frontier models with open models 35:37 Bloomberg: Chinese hackers lean on DeepSeek because it's cheap 37:05 How much in-house expertise it takes to use AI well 42:56 Armadin's Palo Alto office and the Palantir playbook 1:02:54 AI and jobs: normal churn or something bigger? 1:07:19 What founders are actually saying in the group chats 1:08:49 Every meeting recorded, every meeting summarized Subscribe to TWiAI on Substack: https://thisweekinai.ai Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #30
    September 10 · 1 hr 20 min

    OpenAI's chief scientist wants to slow down | E30

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at paypal.launch.co Today’s show: OpenAI's chief scientist wrote a lengthy manifesto arguing that no lab has solved alignment, mere days after GPT-6 Astra shipped. Jason and Lon are joined by Tudor Achim of Harmonic, Alex Elias of Qloo, and Ahmed Ahres of Reactor to figure out if that's genuine alarm being expressed or just another pre-IPO sales pitch and play for regulatory capture. Plus news broke while we were recording! OpenAI is claiming to have solved a second Millennium Prize problem, after a 25-year-plus weight. AND, who is paying influencers to tell you AI is wonderful/harmful? And why? Guests: Tudor Achim on X: https://x.com/tachim Harmonic: https://harmonic.fun/ Alex Elias on X: https://x.com/ape Qloo: https://www.qloo.com/ Ahmed Ahres on X: https://x.com/Boudatw Reactor: https://reactor.inc/ Relevant Links: Jakub Pachocki, "An Alien Mind" — https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/ GPT-6 Astra — https://fortune.com/2026/09/03/openai-debuts-gpt-6-astra-computer-use-greg-brockman-says-start-of-agi/ OpenAI: "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem" — https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/ ControlAI — the nonprofit that sponsored the SciShow episode — https://controlai.org/ New York Times (Eli Tan), "Corporate America Is Getting Hooked on Open-Source A.I." — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/technology/open-source-ai-companies.html Artificial trailer and the cast → https://variety.com/2026/film/news/artificial-trailer-andrew-garfield-openai-biopic-1236802616/ Timestamps: 0:00 "An Alien Mind" 3:08 AI psychosis, marketing, or half a mile ahead on the racetrack? 12:52 The Manhattan Project analogy 15:20 Tudor: if it's really that dangerous, the answer is nationalization 17:02 Regulatory capture: Bill Gurley at All-In, Sacks, and who can afford to be regulated 20:37 The influencer propaganda tape 23:22 BREAKING: OpenAI solves the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem 28:53 The Hank Green / SciShow video sponsored by ControlAI 32:11 Fogging and flooding 46:47 UBS will require AI skills from its 2027 graduate 56:41 How LAUNCH hired its associates-in-training 57:18 NYT: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI 1:04:16 Alex on Qloo's shift from NYT film critics on payroll to small specialized models 1:09:35 First look: the "Artificial" teaser trailer 1:14:34 Sam Altman's bunker, Peter Thiel, and casting rundown Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #29
    September 3 · 1 hr 30 min

    The real danger is the gap BETWEEN two robots | E29

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Today’s show: Anthropic gave AI agents hands, allowing them to control real-world equipment like robots and microscopes… but is it safe to give autonomous agents their own lasers? Gatik’s Gautam Narang says the real danger isn’t one machine like this going rogue, it’s the exploit surface hiding in the gaps between the machines. Plus, in a huge week for AI news… OpenClaw shipped its biggest release ever. AND the entire industry debated whether or not agents are forming “civilizations.” On TWiAI Ep 29, our expert panel — including Gautam (Gatik), Russ d’Sa (LiveKit), and Billy Kraft (Path) — explores the world of “multiplayer agents,” and Jason suggests the one killer feature that would make any new agentic app the market leader. PLUS Perplexity’s new “Hybrid Compute” just for Macs, some advice for Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, the value of “AI Detectors” like Pangram, and Jason’s complete guide to tipping and over-tipping. Guests: Gautam Narang on X: https://x.com/gautam_narang?lang=en Gatik: https://www.gatik.ai/ Russ d’Sa on X: https://x.com/dsa LiveKit: https://livekit.com/ Billy Kraft on X: https://x.com/billykraft Path: https://path.dev/ Relevant Links: OpenClaw 2.0 - https://openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-2-accidentally Grok Bot — https://grok.com Buzz — https://buzz.build Perplexity Hybrid Compute — https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-hybrid-compute-on-mac John Ternus — https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/ OpenAI's Mac mini / Mac Studio buying spree https://the-decoder.com/openai-and-rival-ai-labs-are-buying-tens-of-thousands-of-mac-minis-to-train-computer-use-agents/ Waymo hits a child — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/waymo-nhtsa-crash-child-school.html Timestamps: 2:58 OpenClaw 2.0 5:11 "Agents ARE AI" 7:27 Billy: OpenClaw is still too technical for business users 9:00 Slack Code, and collaborative prompting 10:40 Multi-agent orchestration and Stripe's "minions" 14:13 Slack's moat, switching costs, and the Salesforce rebound 15:11 Jason's "Oracle": a heads-up display for the whole company 18:42 The Hugging Face breach: who's responsible when agents go rogue? 19:42 Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute — local models on your Mac 21:39 Why unmetered local tokens change corporate behavior 26:57 Gatik's Autonomous Vehicle AI Stack 32:22 Jason's Tesla FSD stories 34:05 Are AV companies being pushed to move too fast? 41:38 Trucking is a "have to have," robotaxis are a "nice to have" 42:36 Jason's fix: a safety driver for the first million rides 46:50 Why physical AI's adoption curve runs in decades 52:21 Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard (MHS), explained 1:06:27 How Jason got onion rings on the menu at Buck's of Woodside 1:09:05 AI detectors under fire: Pangram, MIT, and the handwritten diary 1:15:20 Why AI is "very mid" at writing (it learned from the average) 1:17:11 The Orin Kerr test: Pangram catches Claude writing as Kerr 1:28:35 Micro Duck and designing robots with Claude 1:29:42 Phil Kaplan's $14 custom circuit boards Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #28
    August 27 · 1 hr 10 min

    XBOW Founder: “Your Infrastructure is Not Safe” | EP 28

    This Week In Startups is made possible by:PaypalToday’s show:XBOW’s AI has held the top rank on the HackerOne leaderboard for more than a year. On TWiAI, founder Oege de Moor (who also built GitHub Copilot) tells us that no one’s infrastructure is truly safe anymore, now that open-weight models are trailing the American frontier by only a couple of months. Staging a serious cyberattack is now cheap and accessible, with attackers able to get dangerously solid results quickly from relatively cheap, open-source options from China.Guests:Runbin Dong on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/runbindongScale Social: https://scalesocial.ai/Oege de Moor on X: https://x.com/oegerikusXBOW: https://xbow.com/Relevant LinksWSJ: Nvidia-Poolside deal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-is-spending-6-billion-to-build-a-powerful-u-s-alternative-to-chinese-ai-c51c38ccPoolside: https://poolside.ai/Silicon Angle: Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity: https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/24/nvidia-reportedly-eyes-another-investment-in-perplexity-ai-at-a-30b-valuation/Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/Bloomberg: Chinese hackers using DeepSeek: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-24/chinese-hackers-use-deepseek-to-boost-attacks-researchers-say-mt7o4205Nvidia: Groq 3 LPX enters full production: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-groq-3-lpx-now-in-full-production-with-world-class-speed-for-agentic-aiCNBC: Groq-Nvidia acqui-hire deal: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startup-groq-for-about-20-billion-biggest-deal.htmlOpenAI on early Jalapeño results: https://openai.com/index/jalapeno-first-results/Stanley Druckenmiller WSJ op-ed: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/let-the-bond-market-speak-81529d74Druckenmiller confirms op-ed was authored with AI: https://www.notus.org/media/stanley-druckenmillers-wsj-op-ed-bessent-aiPangram: https://www.pangram.com/Alabama AG: OpenAI subpoena announcement: https://www.alabamaag.gov/attorney-general-marshall-launches-investigation-into-openai-and-sam-altman-for-massive-artificial-intelligence-data-breach/Ox Alpha on OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/stealth/ox-alphaApple: M6 and M5 Ultra press release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-m6-and-m5-ultra-for-a-big-leap-in-performance-and-ai-compute/9 to 5 Mac: M5 Mac Studio launch: https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/25/apple-unveils-next-generation-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/DHH on X: Ubiquity comments: https://x.com/dhh/status/2087272392557007042Shane Parrish on X: Ubiquiti Wi-Fi set-up: https://x.com/shaneparrish/status/2088672566558761065Timestamps:0:00 Today's guests: Runbin Dong (Scale Social) and Oege de Moor (XBOW)2:12 Open-weight models are right behind the frontier8:22 Your infrastructure is not ready for what's coming13:07 Nvidia's Perplexity announcement16:43 Spending $2K/month on AI tools per employee21:59 Why security teams have to lean on AI25:19 The Great Chip Land Grab32:02 Jason's multi-agent restaurant-style workflow34:54 AI ghostwriting is lip syncing45:18 Are rogue AI agents breaking the law?52:38 The dangers of using a stealth model58:57 Apple's new M5 Mac Studio1:06:43 Everyone's fav AI tool of the momentSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

  • #27
    August 20 · 1 hr 16 min

    Anthropic is training to destroy your company | EP 27

    This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at paypal.launch.co Today’s show: *On “All In,” Gavin Baker said that Anthropic leadership privately believes that it could one day become “the only private company in the world.” The ensuing street fight on X turned into a referendum on doomerism, the nature of regulatory capture, and why the public hates AI so darn much. Jason’s take: If a frontier lab really believes they’re destined to be the world’s only company, they’re studying your data and planning to steal your business. PLUS why AI agents don’t understand it’s wrong to cheat (and how we can teach them), why Grok Bot may be AI’s “iPhone moment,” and the panel reacts to Amazon feeding rare books into a dino-themed shredding machine. Guests Galina Antova on X: https://x.com/GalinaAntova Kai: https://www.kai.security/ Eric Ho on X: https://x.com/eric_ho Goodfire: https://www.goodfire.com/ Silico: https://www.goodfire.com/silico Relevant Links All-In Podcast: Gavin Baker on Anthropic: https://x.com/theallinpod/status/2088367978270142811 Sholto Douglas response: https://x.com/_sholtodouglas/status/2088463770318516734 Gavin Baker response: https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2088611616577253502 Dario Amodei response: https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758816376807762 Zuckerberg AI manifesto: https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/ Hugging Face: Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: https://huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion-technical-timeline Simon Willison: OpenAI’s accidental cyberattack on Hugging Face: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/ SWE-bench Leaderboards: https://www.swebench.com/ xAI: Introducing Grok Bot: https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot Peter Yang praises Grok Bot: https://x.com/petergyang/status/2089401696946634801?s=20 Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/ @Aaronp613 on X: AirPods with Cameras in action: https://x.com/aaronp613/status/2089522745184760112?s=20 9to5 Mac: AirPods with cameras get their clearest leak yet: https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/17/airpods-with-camera-get-their-clearest-leak-yet/ Toms Hardware: Google Buys Spirit Airlines Data for AI Training: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/google-buys-spirit-airlines-data-for-ai-training-for-just-usd10-million-purchase-includes-hundreds-of-millions-of-emails-microsoft-teams-chats-billions-of-flight-pricing-records-and-anonymized-passenger-records Micro1: https://www.micro1.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 Why is everyone mad at Dario Amodei? 1:47 Is Anthropic training to kill your company? 10:10 How to talk to the public about cyber risk 15:33 Reward hacking and sycophancy 21:55 Why do models care about rewards? 28:55 Is Grok Bot an iPhone Moment? 38:26 First look at AirPods with Cameras 42:16 Why Google bought Spirit Airlines' data 48:52 Amazon is scanning and shredding rare books 59:06 Can we build a "moral layer" on top of models? 1:01:14 Your LLM could catch a mind virus 1:10:55 Are we already in the AGI Era? 1:14:17 Silicon Valley's lost hippie vibes Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #26
    August 13 · 1 hr 28 min

    Why Anthropic is watermarking every word Claude writes | E26

    This Week In AI is made possible by: Paypal Open Today’s show: Anthropic’s new Claude watermark travels around any and all copy-and-pasted text. Is this a logical response to AI slop, or more overreach from those regulation-loving Europeans? The panel agrees that identifying AI outputs has a place, but divides on how the world should get there. PLUS everyone’s favorite section of Mark Zuckerberg’s 6500-word techno-optimist AI manifesto, exploring the frontier labs’ blatant hypocrisy around distillation, and why Texas is hitting the pause button on 474 GW of proposed data centers. Guests: Will Bryk: https://x.com/WilliamBryk Exa: https://exa.ai/ Josh Sirota: https://x.com/joshua_sirota Eragon: https://www.eragon.ai/ Kashif “Kash” Ali: https://x.com/ChKashifAli TaxGPT: https://www.taxgpt.com/ Relevant Links: Anthropic: How Claude marks AI-generated content: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/16266773-how-claude-marks-ai-generated-content Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA): https://c2pa.org/ EU AI Act: Article 50 transparency obligations: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/50/ TechCrunch: Pangram Raises $9M: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/as-ai-content-floods-the-internet-pangram-raises-9m-to-detect-it/ TechCrunch: Anthropic’s landmark copyright settlement is approved: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/20/anthropics-landmark-1-5b-copyright-settlement-is-approved/ World ID iris scanning orb: https://world.org/world-id Time: Sam Altman voices concern about “Dead Internet Theory”: https://time.com/7316046/sam-altman-dead-internet-theory/ Meta: The Future is for Everyone: https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/the-future-is-for-everyone/ Meta: Introducing Muse Glimmer: https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-glimmer-open-agentic-model Texas: Gov. Abbott directs comprehensive data center audit: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-comprehensive-data-center-audit Texas Tribune: New data center projects frozen: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-project-audit-greg-abbott/ ERCOT: https://www.ercot.com/ Public Utility Commission of Texas: https://www.puc.texas.gov/ TechCrunch on Sirota’s “software is dead” thesis: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/18/this-startup-wants-to-make-enterprise-software-look-more-like-a-prompt/ River AI: https://river.ai/ Thinking Machines Lab: https://thinkingmachines.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 Guest Intros 3:30 Anthropic to watermark Claude text 5:50 Cracking down on AI Slop 10:45 Will slop-trackers push users to open source 16:21 Jason's "No Clankers" proposal 23:01 Parsing Zuckerberg's techno-utopian manifesto 39:27 The distillation double standard 44:28 "When you're behind, go open…" 51:17 Texas freezes new data centers 1:04:12 Is software dead? 1:05:39 Software managing, not engineering 1:10:24 Everyone is vibecoding Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #25
    August 6 · 1 hr 20 min

    Is open source AI really ahead of the frontier? 3 builders weigh in. | E25

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL OPEN Today’s show: China’s Alibaba just dropped a 2.4 trillion parameter open weight model that the company claims only trails Anthropic’s flagship among the major frontier rivals. Of course, this happened the very same week that the US government appears to have backed off from banning these models stateside entirely. Are these models anywhere close to actually catching up to the latest and greatest releases from US labs like Anthropic and OpenAI? Really seems to depend on who you ask. (Even long time friends JCal and Elon Musk can’t see eye to eye on it.) So on TWiAI Ep 25, we welcomed on Poolside AI CTO Eiso Kant, EXO Labs co-founder Alex Cheema, and Qloo founder Alex Elias to break down just how close Chinese labs are to catching up with the biggest and best models… and how long it will take US open weight builders to catch up. PLUS we explore the cutting edge of AI-powered baby sleep monitors, consider Hank Green’s public AI apology, and dig into sci-fi author Ursula K. LeGuin’s “hand-mind” thesis. Guests: Eiso Kant on X: https://x.com/eisokant Poolside: https://poolside.ai/ Alex Elias on X: https://x.com/ape Qloo: https://www.qloo.com/ Alex Cheema on X: https://x.com/alexocheema EXO Labs: https://exolabs.net/ Local AI benchmark platform: https://local.ai/ Relevant Links Qwen3.8-Max launch announcement: https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8 Bloomberg on Qwen3.8-Max launch: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/alibaba-drops-another-china-ai-model-with-breakthrough-performance NYT: “White House Whipsaws Silicon Valley Over AI Rules”: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/technology/ai-washington-regulation-whiplash.html Nvidia: “Open Weights and American AI Leadership”: https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-Leadership.pdf World Bank: World Development Report 2026: https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/1e4e52502104a331fb42cba0d4afa995-0050062026/original/WDR2026-Concept-Note.pdf Hank Green apology on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1vbmoj5/comment/p0vzmog/ Taylor Lorenz responds to Hank Green on X: https://x.com/TaylorLorenz/status/2083272682188206564 TechCrunch: Substack partners with Pangram: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/substacks-new-tool-tells-you-whos-been-writing-their-newsletters-with-ai/ Amazon: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Always Coming Home” expanded edition: https://www.amazon.com/Ursula-K-Guin-Authors-Expanded/dp/1598536036 Timestamps: 0:00 Guest intros and open 10:03 Why Poolside thinks coding is the path to AGI 12:55 A first look at EXO's local.ai 16:24 The White House's open source pivot 20:21 Margins, compute, and "dirt to intelligence" 36:02 Jason's self-driving auction pitch 37:58 Hank Green's AI apology 38:45 Is AI addictive? 1:08:31 What does it mean for AI to be "privacy first"? 1:10:29 Enterprise AI sovereignty and "colonization" Sign up for the TWiAI newsletter! Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #24
    July 30 · 1 hr 6 min

    Are we already in the Singularity? | E24

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Open Today’s show: On a podcast this week, Sam Altman made a bold declaration: “We are now, like, in the singularity.” A bold claim which Alex puts bluntly to this week’s panel. Grant Lee of Gamma and Philip Johnston of Starcloud sound off… Is this actually the Singularity, and if so, why do things still feel so normal? Plus the panel and guest host Alex Wilhelm discuss the infrastructure and economics that will make singularity-scale AI buildout possible… NVIDIA’s strongly worded letter about open-weight models… Moonshot’s new Kimi K3 twist on open-source licenses… Stripe’s reported $10B run at OpenRouter… and more. Guests Grant Lee on X: https://x.com/thisisgrantlee Gamma: https://gamma.app/ Philip Johnston on X: https://x.com/PhilipJohnston Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com/ Relevant Links TechCrunch: Gamma hits $110M ARR: https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/10/ai-powerpoint-killer-gamma-hits-2-1b-valuation-100m-arr-founder-says/ Nvidia: How Starcloud is Bringing Data Centers to Space: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/ Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/open-weight-models-letter-1.pdf CNBC on Nvidia-OpenAI infrastructure plans: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/27/nvidia-and-openai-in-talks-for-up-to-250-billion-dollar-ai-backstop.html Kimi K3: https://www.kimi.com/en Crusoe announces strategic Starcloud partnership: https://www.crusoe.ai/resources/newsroom/crusoe-to-become-first-cloud-operator-in-space-through-partnership-with-starcloud Andrej Karpathy on YouTube: “Let’s Build GPT”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCc8FmEb1nY Demis Hassabis Starcloud post on X: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/1999296127276126417 RAISE Summit: https://www.raisesummit.com/ Lilian Weng exits Thinking Machines post: https://x.com/lilianweng/status/2081816923088814421 Baseten: https://www.baseten.co/ Fireworks AI: https://fireworks.ai/ Legora: https://legora.com/ OpenEvidence: https://www.openevidence.com/ Yahoo: Stripe in talks to acquire OpenRouter: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/stripe-talks-acquire-openrouter-potential-215104525.html Sam Altman on the Relentless podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv3CEAS_w34 TechCrunch: Cursor India-only pricing tier: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/27/cursor-makes-its-biggest-india-push-yet-ahead-of-spacex-acquisition-with-localized-pricing/ Gergely Orosz: The Pragmatic Engineer: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Guest intros: Grant Lee (Gamma) and Philip Johnston (Starcloud) 1:22 Nvidia's open weight letter 8:11 Starcloud's first H100 in space 19:47 Series A extension economics 20:39 How Gamma stayed lean and balanced work and fun 30:40 Betting on a compute-constrained world 35:48 Different approaches to pricing 44:59 Where does the AI moat really live? 57:41 Are we in the Singularity? 1:04:42 Starcloud's mission to Alpha Centauri Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #23
    July 23 · 1 hr

    America already lost one AI race | TWiAI Ep 23

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL OPEN Today’s show: This week, our panel of AI experts — Anand Kannappan (Patronus AI), Ori Goshen (AI21 Labs), and Alex Finn (Henry Intelligent Machines) — join special guest host Lon Harris to debate whether Washington will move to formally limit powerful foreign AI models like Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Z.ai’s GLM-5.2. What does “winning the AI race” actually mean on a practical level? Why is cybersecurity, not benchmarks, likely the actual battleground. And why did Hugging Face have to use GLM-5.2 to investigate their recent breach rather than a frontier US model like Fable 5? PLUS why agents still fail so much on long horizon tasks, why proper model routing has such a HUGE impact on enterprise AI bills, and we take a look at Alex’s hacked digital typewriter he uses to code without distractions. Guests: Anand Kannappan on X: https://x.com/anandnk24 Patronus AI: https://www.patronus.ai/ Ori Goshen on X: https://x.com/origoshen AI21: https://www.ai21.com/ Alex Finn on X: https://x.com/AlexFinn Alex’s Vibe Coding Academy: https://www.skool.com/vibe-coding-academy/about Relevant Links: Axios: “The Secret Trump Administration Battle to Fight Chinese AI”: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/20/ai-us-china-open-source-kimi Chamath post on US AI options: https://x.com/chamath/status/2079457219892871458?s=20 Brian Armstrong post on spend vs. token usage: https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2070670644577280109 Hugging Face: Security incident disclosure: https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026 VentureBeat Hugging Face coverage: https://venturebeat.com/security/safety-guardrails-blocked-hugging-faces-defenders-not-the-attacker-when-an-ai-agent-breached-its-systems David Sacks post on cyber guardrails: https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2078984980588531855 Databricks Unity AI Gateway: https://www.databricks.com/product/artificial-intelligence/unity-ai-gateway Ramp’s Router: https://ramp.com/router/ Timestamps: 0:00 Will the US limit foreign open source models? 5:40 Are the American frontier AI labs in danger of bankruptcy? 7:15 The risks of over-regulating AI 10:20 What does it mean to win the AI race? 17:08 Is self-hosting agentic Chinese models safe? 20:08 Why agents still fail when models are so smart 25:28 Simulating the digital world for agents 36:51 Why picking the right model for the task is so hard 46:29 Alex is developing "ambient intelligence" 52:35 What we know about the Hugging Face breach 53:46 Are safety guardrails kneecapping our best models? Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #22
    July 16 · 1 hr 17 min

    Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 kick off Token Price Wars | E22

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL OPEN Today’s show: The price of tokens keeps tumbling down, and it’s changing who controls AI. Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 landed within two weeks of one another, offering powerful alternatives at a fraction of frontier prices. But are SpaceXAI’s latest offering and open weight models truly ready to replace Opus, GPT-5.5, and Fable? Are enterprises finally ready to stop renting and start owning their intelligence? On TWiAI Episode 22, Jason and Lon welcome three top founders — Sara Hooker (Adaption Labs), Manu Sharma (Labelbox), and Spiros Xanthos (Resolve AI) — to break down the global AI price war, and what it means for the frontier labs and customers alike. Plus Denis Hassabis’ call for an AI Standards Body, Uber and Waymo duke it out over DC robotaxis, and is SpaceXAI really going to put data centers in orbit any time soon? Guests: Sara Hooker on X: https://x.com/sarahookr Adaption Labs: https://adaptionlabs.ai/ Manu Sharma on X: https://x.com/manuaero Labelbox: https://labelbox.com/ Spiros Xanthos on X: https://x.com/spirosx Resolve AI: https://resolve.ai/ Relevant Links Introducing Grok 4.5**:** https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5 GLM from Z.ai: https://z.ai Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: https://artificialanalysis.ai/ Demis Hassabis: “A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age”: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2076957440109625718 Cerebras: https://www.cerebras.ai/ Austin Allred post cited by Jason: https://x.com/Austen/status/2076745226387902925 TechCrunch coverage of DC autonomous driving bill: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/13/ubers-robotaxi-lobbying-effort-has-put-it-on-a-collision-course-with-waymo/ DoorDash: Meet Dot: https://about.doordash.com/en-us/dot TechCrunch coverage of orbital data center debate: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/13/sam-altmans-space-data-center-trash-talk-is-what-most-experts-already-believe Falcon 9 booster’s record 36th flight: https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/07/09/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-falcon-9-rocket-on-record-breaking-36th-flight/ Timestamps:0:00 A new generation of lower-cost models 4:10 Enterprises want their own intelligence stack 6:10 Frontier vs. open source: where does the value go? 10:03 Is enterprises destined to go small? 30:04 Self-improvement as the real fix 31:52 Should the AI industry regulate itself? 47:14 Uber vs. Waymo in DC 1:03:53 Can AI data centers in space really work? 1:14:47 You get a plug! Everyone gets a plug! Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #21
    July 9 · 1 hr 20 min

    What happens if China pulls the plug on open-source AI? | Ep 21

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL Today’s show: China is weighing a ban on foreign access to its top AI models… the same low-cost open-weight systems on which half of the Valley’s startups are building. So we asked our two all-star panelists — Arena CEO/Co-Founder Anastasios Angelopoulos and Hippocratic AI CEO/Co-Founder Munjal Shah — what happens to US companies when their favorite cheap, powerful models vaporize overnight. PLUS why Hippocratic runs 31 models in parallel to ensure clinical-grade safety, the latency-vs-intelligence tradeoff no one is optimizing for, and why a company’s benchmarks might become their most valuable IP. Guests: Anastasios Angelopoulos on X: https://x.com/ml_angelopoulos Arena AI: https://arena.ai/ Agent Arena: https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent Munjal Shah on X: https://x.com/munjalshah Hippocratic AI: https://hippocraticai.com/ Relevant Links: Reuters: “Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access…”: https://www.reuters.com/world/beijing-is-looking-curbing-overseas-access-chinas-top-ai-models-sources-say-2026-07-07/ Z.ai: https://z.ai/ Alibaba’s Qwen: https://qwen.ai/ Google’s Gemma: https://ai.google.dev/gemma Reflection AI: https://reflection.ai/ Nvidia: “How Open Models are Driving Research”: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-models-icml-2026/ DoorDash: “How we learned to trust our AI code reviewer”: https://careersatdoordash.com/blog/how-we-learned-to-trust-our-ai-code-reviewer-at-doordash Harvey AI: https://www.harvey.ai/ ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/ Anthropic: “A global workspace in language models”: https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace CNN: “Trump rings opening bell to mark first day of trading for Trump Accounts”: https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/business/trump-accounts-launch Brown University Health: https://www.brownhealth.org/ Timestamps: 0:00 Will US companies lose access to Chinese models? 1:42 Open source makes running 31 models viable 5:01 How deep is the West's open source bench? 13:20 Jagged Intelligence and why post-training matters 25:22 Benchmarks as living quality checks 32:49 Why models still struggle with drug names 42:58 Fine-tuning TV, cough, and sob detection 46:08 What is Arena actually selling? 1:08:29 Nationalization vs. buying stakes in AI companies Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #20
    July 2 · 1 hr 10 min

    Mythos, Sonnet 5, GLM-5.2 Dominate the News Cycle | Episode 20

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL Today’s show: The US government won’t let you use the most powerful releases from US AI labs… but a Chinese lab is giving away their latest frontier model for free. This week, we’ve got three AI CEOs building in image generation (Victor Perez of Krea), mobile agents (Div Garg of The AGI Company), and enterprise governance (Andrew Berman of Runlayer). Together, they’re breaking down what’s really happening underneath all this chaos, and why the industry’s more focused on “minimum viable intelligence” over breaking benchmarks. Guests Victor Perez on X: https://x.com/viccpoes Krea AI: https://www.krea.ai/ Krea 2 Raw and Turbo on Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/krea/Krea-2-Raw Div Garg on X: https://x.com/divgarg The AGI Company: https://theagi.company/ Andrew Berman on X: https://x.com/berman66 Runlayer: https://www.runlayer.com/ Relevant Links Anthropic: “Introducing Claude Sonnet 5”: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5 Z.ai: GLM-5.2: https://docs.z.ai/guides/llm/glm-5.2 Yuchen Jin X post: “GLM-5.2 is the open source Claude moment”: https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/2071278256817574297 TechCrunch: GPT-5.6 restricted rollout coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/openai-limits-gpt-5-6-rollout-after-government-request-says-restrictions-shouldnt-be-the-norm/ AndroidWorld benchmark on GitHub: https://github.com/google-research/android_world The Information Higgsfield valuation article: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-video-startup-talks-quadruple-valuation-5-billion Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF): https://aaif.io/ Tomasz Tunguz: “When AI Costs More Than The Engineer”: https://tomtunguz.com/ai-spend-breakeven-2029/ Fortune Runlayer raise coverage: https://fortune.com/2026/06/24/exclusive-vinod-khosla-felicis-runlayer-nanit-30-million-enterprise-ai/ Gusto: https://gusto.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Making sense of US AI policy 5:09 Tiny Action Models vs. LLMs 7:02 Runlayer, AGI Inc, and computer-use agents 10:05 What does "trusted access" really mean? 12:37 Why Krea open sourced its image model 22:21 BREAKING: Claude Sonnet 5 is here 26:00 GLM-5.2 is the open source Claude moment 31:58 Personalization and corporate ontology 41:25 Can we trust Higgsfield's numbers? 50:39 Distillation: The threat is real 58:01 Agentic personhood and corporate rights 1:03:19 Everyone's AGI timeline and p(doom) score Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

  • #19
    June 25 · 1 hr 13 min

    Are world models the unlock for Physical AI? | Episode 19

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Today’s show: *When we think of “Physical AI,” most of us conjure images of humanoid robots and self-driving cars. But there’s a lot more to the category than just breakdancing Chinese bots and Waymos, from excavators autonomously digging tomorrows worksites, to a robot the size of four pizza boxes deploying to the ISS. Guest host Alex Wilhelm sits down with three founders in the trenches of the Physical AI Space: Boris Sofman of Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction equipment Jeff Hawke of Odyssey, a frontier AI lab specializing in world models for robotics and video games Ethan Barajas of Icarus Robotics, designers of the free-flying Joy robot that will join the ISS crew in 2027 Guests: Boris Sofman on X: https://x.com/bsofman Bedrock Robotics: https://bedrockrobotics.com/ Jeff Hawke on X: https://x.com/jeffrey_hawke Odyssey: https://odyssey.ml/ Ethan Barajas on X: https://x.com/ethanbarajas11 Icarus Robotics: https://www.icarusrobotics.com/ Relevant Links Bedrock Excavators Remove 65,000 Cubic Yards of Dirt: https://www.enr.com/articles/61982-bedrock-robotics-excavators-remove-65-000-cubic-yards-of-dirt-on-southwest-project Odyssey $310M Series B article: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/world-model-maker-odyssey-nabs-1-45b-valuation-backed-by-amazon-and-other-big-names/ Icarus “Joyride” Mission announcement: https://thedebrief.org/icarus-is-building-the-robotic-labor-force-for-space-voyager-technologies-is-sending-a-next-generation-zero-gravity-robot-on-a-joyride-to-space/ PROWL: Prioritized Regret-Driven Optimization for World Model Learning: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18803 NVIDIA Cosmos 3 report: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/cosmos-lab/cosmos3/technical-report.pdf ISS Columbus Laboratory Module: https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/columbus-laboratory-module/ NASA’s Astrobee flying robot: https://www.nasa.gov/astrobee/ Voyager Technologies: https://www.voyagerspace.com/ Vast Space: https://www.vastspace.com/ Blue Origin’s New Glenn: https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn “Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735 “Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke: https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0553287893 Theo Von “This Past Weekend” podcast: https://www.theovon.com/podcast Anthropic statement on Fable/Mythos suspension: https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access Timestamps: 0:00 The Year of Physical AI 1:28 Why everyone's bullish on world models 7:03 Physical AI is harder, but probably bigger 9:08 How to think about world models 16:00 When data becomes "adversarial" 25:00 How Bedrock powers autonomous excavators 30:48 Why teleoperation gets a bad rap 39:10 Meet Joy the space robot 41:33 Laser comms coming to next-gen stations 46:29 Why everyone hates data centers 57:33 When does Claude Fable come back? Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

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