This Week in AI
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- 12. Nov. 2026
Über den Podcast
An experts-only AI podcast: Think the 'All In' podcast for AI. Jason + 3 CEO-level experts breaking down the news & trends.
Folgen 41
Alex Finn: Anthropic has the best model, Grok has the best harness | TWiAI 39
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:Anthropic shipped Claude Fable 5.2. Panelist …
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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:
Anthropic shipped Claude Fable 5.2. Panelist Alex Finn calls it a breakthrough on intelligence, speed, and cost at once, while noting that it’s still best to actually build things in Grok Bot, “by far the best harness on Planet Earth.” He actually asked Grok Bot, Claude Duet and ChatGPT Dots to send a $1,000 PayPal. Only Grok Bot got it done.
TWiAI 39’s all star panel also includes Sara Hooker (co-founder & CEO of Adaption Labs) and Manu Sharma (co-founder & CEO of Labelbox). They’re discussing whether the model or harness matters more, and Sara observes that the entire Fable 5.2 roll-out is “almost entirely a story about cost.” Anthropic wants to own both the model and the harness so switching feels more painful.
Manu explains why enterprises tend to remain locked in once IT wires up all their integrations… but Jason still feels his team drifting from Claude over to Grok Bot. So who wins in the end?
PLUS: Anthropic sets its IPO range and drops new Claude office apps, Nvidia’s still investigating whether its CEO unethically sent extra chips to China, and are shadowy overseas interests behind the anti-data center push? The panel has some theories…
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/
Alex Finn on X: https://x.com/AlexFinn
Henry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai/
Relevant Links
Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.2 and Claude Mythos 5.2 ahead of IPO (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/09/anthropic-claude-fable-5-2-mythos-5-2.html
Claude's launch post: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2119867114450268322
OpenAI launches GPT-6 Cyber with a higher API price than Anthropic and Google (VentureBeat): https://venturebeat.com/technology/openai-launches-gpt-6-cyber-with-stronger-exploit-research-and-higher-api-price-than-anthropic-and-google
Grok Bot turns agents into persistent digital coworkers (VentureBeat): https://venturebeat.com/ai/spacexais-grok-bot-turns-agents-into-persistent-digital-coworkers-that-can-operate-your-apps-for-120-per-month/
Hermes Agent (Nous Research): https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
Anthropic sets IPO price range of $70 to $78 a share (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/10/anthropic-sets-ipo-price-range-of-70-to-78-per-share-to-reach-an-implied-valuation-of-1-404-trillion/
Nvidia will investigate Jensen Huang's relationship with a possible Chinese spy (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/08/nvidia-says-its-investigating-ceo-jensen-huangs-relationship-with-possible-chinese-spy/
Report: Alice Huang helped move $7.5B in Nvidia chips into China (Tom's Hardware): https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/policy/alice-huang-reportedly-instrumental-in-securing-over-usd7-5-billion-of-nvidia-ai-gpu-imports-during-three-year-relationship-with-jensen-huang-helped-move-240-000-banned-chips-into-china-mostly-h100-and-h200
An unexpected activist emerged to help block a $5 billion data center in Maryland (NPR): https://www.npr.org/2026/11/07/nx-s1-6007770/data-centers-activist-moratorium
Timestamps:
0:00 "Anthropic clearly has had a breakthrough"
0:31 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co
9:41 Frontier models vs. smaller workhorse models
11:18 Alex's PayPal agent test
15:03 Enterprise lock-in and managed IT integrations
20:39 Is Claude commoditizing SaaS?
26:53 The $7.5B Nvidia chip report
39:01 Do Chinese labs even need chips on the mainland?
49:29 How export controls are like the War on Drugs
58:51 How should data centers win Americans back?
1:04:50 Attackers have the edge for now
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 …
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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!
Anthropic’s Money Machine, “Slop” Degrees & the Meat Proxy | TWiAI Ep 37
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PayPal: https://paypal.launch.coToday’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 …
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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:
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TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
Follow Lon:
Follow 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:
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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.coToday’s show:Sam Altman told OpenAI staff that there are only three ways for AI regulation to go: an international watchdog, every lab merging …
Shownotes
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?
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Follow Lon:
Follow 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:
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Why Fortune 500 Companies Are Quietly Switching to Open Models
This Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal: http://paypal.launch.coToday’s show:Companies are spending $1 million on AI in a single month, but can’t always point directly to any resulting revenue. Jeffrey …
Shownotes
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
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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
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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 …
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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/
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 …
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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/
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.coToday’s show:OpenAI is claiming to have …
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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
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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The biggest AI threat still comes from humans | E31
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PayPal: paypal.launch.coToday’s show:Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are apparently scared of AI models going rogue. Swarms of agents spontaneously deciding to copy …
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This Week In Startups is made possible by:
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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
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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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.coToday’s show:OpenAI's chief scientist wrote a …
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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
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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
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The real danger is the gap BETWEEN two robots | E29
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PaypalToday’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 …
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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
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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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) …
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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
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.coToday’s show:*On “All In,” Gavin Baker said that …
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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
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Why Anthropic is watermarking every word Claude writes | E26
This Week In AI is made possible by:Paypal OpenToday’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 …
Shownotes
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
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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
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Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Is open source AI really ahead of the frontier? 3 builders weigh in. | E25
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPAL OPENToday’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 …
Shownotes
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!
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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
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Are we already in the Singularity? | E24
This Week In Startups is made possible by:Paypal OpenToday’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 …
Shownotes
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
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
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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
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America already lost one AI race | TWiAI Ep 23
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPAL OPENToday’s show:This week, our panel of AI experts — Anand Kannappan (Patronus AI), Ori Goshen (AI21 Labs), and Alex Finn (Henry Intelligent Machines) — join …
Shownotes
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?
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
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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
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Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 kick off Token Price Wars | E22
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPAL OPENToday’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 …
Shownotes
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!
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow 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
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What happens if China pulls the plug on open-source AI? | Ep 21
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPALToday’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 …
Shownotes
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/
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
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Follow Lon:
Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow 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
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Mythos, Sonnet 5, GLM-5.2 Dominate the News Cycle | Episode 20
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPALToday’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 …
Shownotes
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
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
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Are world models the unlock for Physical AI? | Episode 19
This Week In Startups is made possible by:PaypalToday’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 …
Shownotes
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
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Follow Lon:
Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow 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
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Why AI Models Aren’t the Product Any More | TWiAI Ep 18
SpaceX bought Cursor for $60 billion. Satya Nadella says companies need to stop relying on third party AI models and build their own “token capital.” The focus is shifting from LLMs to the application layer …
Shownotes
SpaceX bought Cursor for $60 billion. Satya Nadella says companies need to stop relying on third party AI models and build their own “token capital.” The focus is shifting from LLMs to the application layer sitting on top of them. Here to unpack what that means are guest experts Ali Ansari (Micro1) and Ryan Daniels (Crosby).Plus we get a sneak peek at their new contract redlining benchmark, a crucial eval for how well LLMs don’t just answer questions about the law, but demonstrate actual legal reasoning.Timestamps:0:00 SpaceX acquires Cursor7:36 Distillation vs. building your own model19:43 Nadella's "Frontier Without an Ecosystem"30:21 AI in the courtroom32:15 Ando: the intriguing new workplace tool1:05:38 Inside Micro1 and Crosby's new benchmark1:07:14Guests:Ali Ansari: https://x.com/aliansarinikMicro1: https://www.micro1.ai/Ryan Daniels: https://x.com/ryanjdanielsCrosby: https://crosby.ai/Relevant Links:Bloomberg: “SpaceX acquires Cursor for $60B”: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/spacex-cements-60-billion-deal-to-take-over-ai-startup-cursorQuinn Thompson “brilliant corporate finance” post: https://x.com/qthomp/status/2066859672749977988Business Insider: “Inside Cursor’s Wild Rise”: https://www.businessinsider.com/cursor-ceo-michael-truell-spacex-elon-musk-anthropic-2026-6Satya Nadella: “A frontier without an ecosystem is not stable”: https://x.com/satyanadella/article/2066182223213293753Joshua Browder’s Do Not Pay: https://donotpay.com/Harvard Magazine: “AI Outperforms Doctors in Emergency Room Tasks”: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-studyJoshua Kushner “Long Humans” post: https://x.com/JoshuaKushner/status/2065093542809092465Ando: https://ando.so/Nim Ravid on X: https://x.com/Nim_Ravid1Subscribe 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 Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow 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/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Hermes Agent, NotebookLM & LiveKit Founders on the AI Agent Race | TWiAI 17
Apple just paid a rival a billion dollars a year because it could not build Siri itself, and that tells you where the AI platform war actually stands: the edge has moved up the stack, from the model to the …
Shownotes
Apple just paid a rival a billion dollars a year because it could not build Siri itself, and that tells you where the AI platform war actually stands: the edge has moved up the stack, from the model to the agent layer sitting on top of it.
This week's roundtable makes the case that whoever controls that layer controls the experience, and we brought in three founders building it from different angles: Hermes Agent, NotebookLM, and LiveKit. Their through-line is that the harness is temporary, the model keeps eating it, and the people building agents right now are designing for capabilities that do not exist yet.
This week's roundtable:
Jeffrey Quesnelle (Co-founder & CEO, Nous Research, the open source AI lab behind Hermes Agent)
Steven B Johnson (Editorial Director of NotebookLM & Google Labs, co-creator of NotebookLM)
Russ d'Sa (Co-founder & CEO, LiveKit, the open source real-time voice/video infrastructure behind ChatGPT voice mode)
Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: https://paypalopen.com
Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:08 Welcome to Episode 17
1:40 Jeffrey Quesnelle on Hermes Agent and the open source agent race
5:03 Steven Johnson on NotebookLM, source-grounding, and going agentic
7:32 Why AI got booed at commencement: the first generation raised on ChatGPT
10:48 Russ d'Sa on LiveKit powering ChatGPT, Tesla, Grok, and Salesforce voice
27:50 Apple's $1B Gemini deal and the Siri UX problem
52:49 "Functional AGI, unevenly distributed": where the models actually are
57:24 The harness is temporary: why agent builders design for the next model
Guests:
Jeffrey Quesnelle, Nous Research: https://nousresearch.com | https://x.com/theemozilla
Steven Johnson, NotebookLM (Google Labs): https://notebooklm.google.com | https://x.com/stevenbjohnson
Russ d'Sa, LiveKit: https://livekit.io | https://x.com/dsa
Referenced in this episode:
Nous Research / Hermes Agent: https://nousresearch.com
NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com
LiveKit: https://livekit.io
OpenAI ChatGPT: https://openai.com
Tesla: https://www.tesla.com
Grok (xAI): https://x.ai
Salesforce Agentforce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce
SAP Joule: https://www.sap.com/products/artificial-intelligence/ai-assistant.html
Apple Intelligence: https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence
Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com
Anthropic Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai
Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai
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Show X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI
#ThisWeekInAI #AI #NousResearch #NotebookLM #LiveKit #OpenSourceAI #AIAgents #Siri #Gemini #VoiceAI
AI Layoffs, Compute Costs & Agents | Naveen Rao & Alex Finn on This Week in AI Episode 16
The future of AI isn't about whether the model is smart enough. It's about whether we can afford to run it. We dug into the AI cost panic, the energy wall that's coming for compute, and why "developers are …
Shownotes
The future of AI isn't about whether the model is smart enough. It's about whether we can afford to run it. We dug into the AI cost panic, the energy wall that's coming for compute, and why "developers are disappearing" gets the economics exactly backwards.This week's roundtable: Naveen Rao (CEO of Unconventional AI, building brain-inspired analog chips, formerly sold companies to Intel and Databricks) and Alex Finn (founder of Henry Intelligent Machines and Creator Buddy).Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/Timestamps:0:00 Cold open1:21 Welcome to Episode 162:44 Is the AI cost panic real, or just "token maxing"?5:08 It's not the intelligence, it's how people use AI9:40 Surgeons vs. shotguns: prompt discipline & matching models to tasks13:10 Naveen's path from Intel and Databricks to Unconventional15:08 Why developers aren't disappearing18:37 How energy overtook CapEx in the cost of compute21:34 The energy wall & getting to 3 orders of magnitude more efficient25:52 AI's PR problem & the data center backlash27:55 China's hunger vs. America's AI boogeyman30:38 Data center taxes, equity stakes & the politics of AI upside37:54 The Anthropic IPO & how these founders actually invest🔗 Guests:Naveen Rao, Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai | https://x.com/AlexFinnAlex Finn, Henry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai | https://x.com/NaveenGRao🔗 Host:Alex Wilhelm, This Week in Startups: https://x.com/alex🔗 Referenced in this episode:Unconventional AI (analog chips for AI): https://unconv.aiMosaicML (acquired by Databricks): https://www.databricks.com/research/m...Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel)Creator Buddy: https://creatorbuddy.ioQwen (open-weight model Alex runs locally): https://qwenlm.aiNVIDIA DGX Spark: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products...Anthropic (filed to go public): https://www.anthropic.comHenry Intelligent Machines: https://meethenry.ai/🔗 Subscribe and follow:Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai#ThisWeekInAI #AI #UnconventionalAI #NaveenRao #AlexFinn #AnalogComputing #AIcompute #AIenergy #TokenMaxing #AIlayoffs #AnthropicIPO
"Nobody Lost Their Job to AI, Just the Promise of AI" - This Week in AI Ep 15
The AI jobs panic is here. Meta cut 8,000. Intuit cut 3,000. CapEx went up. Nobody can agree if anyone has actually lost a job to AI, or just to the promise of it. We dug into the GPU squeeze, the new craft of …
Shownotes
The AI jobs panic is here. Meta cut 8,000. Intuit cut 3,000. CapEx went up. Nobody can agree if anyone has actually lost a job to AI, or just to the promise of it. We dug into the GPU squeeze, the new craft of "reward engineering," Pope Leo's call to disarm AI, and why Chinese open-source models just blew past American ones in token usage.
This week's roundtable: Erik Bernhardsson (CEO of Modal Labs, the serverless GPU cloud), Tanay Kothari (CEO of Wispr Flow, the voice dictation app every VC in the valley uses), and Richard Socher (CEO of Recursive Superintelligence and You.com).
Thank you to our exclusive sponsor:
PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/
Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
0:53 Welcome to Episode 15
5:53 Recursive's plan to build a self-improving "Eureka machine"
8:10 Token spend now exceeds headcount at the frontier
9:56 GPU crunch, Hopper prices, and the Anthropic-Colossus shockwave
12:23 Wispr Flow's 90% gross margin playbook
14:30 Running $100M in marketing with two humans and a swarm of agents
18:29 Reward hacking, paperclips, and the rise of the "reward engineer"
24:39 Why CEOs put one person in charge: multi-objective AI
28:17 Meta's 8,000 layoffs, $145B CapEx, Goldman vs. Stanford
33:23 "Nobody lost their job to AI, just the promise of AI"
37:57 Jevons paradox: software demand is infinite, illustrations aren't
39:48 Meta's keystroke monitoring and the back-channel reaction
42:55 Equity, Trump accounts, and rooting for your old employer
44:06 The Bloomberg/Indeed dev jobs chart
47:34 Jason's pitch: hiring a 22-year-old AI-native "software valet"
50:29 Pope Leo: "AI needs to be disarmed"
57:41 Chris Olah on AI displacement and the global poor
1:00:46 Chinese models hit 9 trillion tokens, DeepSeek V4 Flash goes #1
1:03:04 Strange biases, Tiananmen Square, and the US open-source vacuum
1:05:07 Who they're hiring
🔗 Guests:
Erik Bernhardsson, Modal Labs: https://modal.com | https://x.com/bernhardsson
Tanay Kothari, Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai | https://x.com/tankots
Richard Socher, Recursive Superintelligence / You.com: https://recursive.com | https://x.com/RichardSocher
🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Modal Labs: https://modal.com
Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai
Recursive Superintelligence launch: https://recursive.com
You.com: https://you.com
Anthropic / SpaceX Colossus 1 compute deal: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-spacex
TechCrunch on the $1.25B/month Anthropic-xAI compute deal: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-25-billion-per-month-for-compute/
Meta's 8,000 layoffs and 2026 AI CapEx of $145B: https://www.reuters.com
Intuit cuts 3,000 jobs to fund AI integration: https://www.reuters.com
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon NYT op-ed on AI job loss: https://www.nytimes.com
Stanford study on entry-level AI-exposed jobs (-16%): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu
Pope Leo XIV: "AI needs to be disarmed": https://www.vatican.va
Chris Olah (Anthropic) on AI and the global poor: https://www.anthropic.com
OpenRouter token usage leaderboard: https://openrouter.ai/rankings
DeepSeek V4 Flash: https://www.deepseek.com
Qwen 3 Max (Alibaba): https://qwenlm.ai
🔗 Subscribe and follow:
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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #ModalLabs #WisprFlow #Recursive #YouCom #DeepSeek #Qwen #MetaLayoffs #Anthropic #Colossus #PopeLeo #RewardHacking #AIJobs #OpenSource
Grads boo AI, Reese Witherspoon gets dunked + Karpathy joins Anthropic | TWiAI E14
The frontier labs are coming for the application layer, and they're going to steal your idea. We dug into Andrej Karpathy's move to Anthropic, the new rules of AI etiquette, and why graduates are booing AI at …
Shownotes
The frontier labs are coming for the application layer, and they're going to steal your idea. We dug into Andrej Karpathy's move to Anthropic, the new rules of AI etiquette, and why graduates are booing AI at commencement speeches.
This week's roundtable: Kanjun Qiu (CEO of Imbue, building open source agents), Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO of Fundamental, large tabular models for enterprise data), and Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear, the product development system used by OpenAI, Coinbase, Cursor, Ramp, and Cash App).
Thank you to our exclusive sponsor:
PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/
Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:02 Welcome to Episode 14 of This Week in AI
1:45 Kanjun Qiu on Imbue's GPU cluster bet that funds the company
5:38 Jeremy Fraenkel on why LLMs choke on structured enterprise data
9:36 Karri Saarinen on Linear and product work for AI agents
12:50 Design in the age of AI: why early-stage product design is getting worse
21:18 Jason coins "AI etiquette": your output is your responsibility
33:30 Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic
40:00 The cult of each AI lab: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI
47:00 Anthropic's pricing misstep and the "punk software" movement
50:00 The verticalization war coming for the application layer
55:00 "Claude knows more about me than my partner": power concentration in AI
58:30 Mac M5 clusters and confidential compute on AWS
1:07:30 Graduates boo AI at commencement: Schmidt, Borchetta, Cawfield
1:22:00 Four founders deliver their own commencement speeches
1:28:30 Reese Witherspoon vs the New York Times
1:33:00 Plugs and where to find the guests
🔗 Guests on X:
Kanjun Qiu, Imbue: https://imbue.com | https://x.com/kanjun
Jeremy Fraenkel, Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech | https://x.com/fraenkelj
Karri Saarinen, Linear: https://linear.app | https://x.com/karrisaarinen
🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic (announcement): https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312?s=20
Imbue Blueprint (open source agent skill): https://imbue.com/blueprint
ExoLabs (daisy-chained Mac clusters): https://exolabs.net
Abacus (on-prem language models): https://goabacus.co
Whisper Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai
Perplexity Model Council: https://perplexity.ai
NYT editorial on Reese Witherspoon and AI: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/opinion/reese-witherspoon-mel-robbins-girlboss-ai.html
🔗 Subscribe and follow:
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#ThisWeekInAI #AI #Imbue #Fundamental #Linear #Anthropic #OpenAI #Karpathy #AIEtiquette #VibeCoding #PunkSoftware #AICommencement #OpenSourceAI
How the 1% Will Own Compute (and What It Means for You)
The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute …
Shownotes
The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space).
Thank you to our exclusive sponsor:
PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/
Timestamps:
0:00 Cold open
1:21 Welcome to Episode 13
2:51 Is China closing the AI gap? Arena's data
5:16 Lightmatter and the photonic interconnect bottleneck
9:42 StarCloud 2, Nvidia Space Ruben 1, and orbital data centers
17:24 Thinking Machines' interaction model: what's actually new
28:22 Whisper Flow and the 3-pedal desk setup
33:48 Real-time desktop and camera awareness as the real unlock
40:25 Why this 100x's compute demand
42:43 The polarization of compute and $10M personal data centers
49:25 The layoff wave: Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork
54:48 The 10x gap between AI-first and non-AI-first employees
59:52 Unlimited agency and the abundance future
1:00:46 Anthropic's Project Luna runs a retail store
1:03:45 Decoupling labor from value creation
1:05:03 P(doom) round
🔗 Guests:
Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena: https://arena.ai | @ML_Angelopolous
Nick Harris, Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Philip Johnston, StarCloud: https://starcloud.com | @philipjohnston
🔗 Referenced in this episode:
Thinking Machines, Introducing Interaction Models: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/interaction-models/
LMArena leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai
Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co
Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com
TechCrunch, Cloudflare says AI made 1,100 jobs obsolete: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/08/cloudflare-says-ai-made-1100-jobs-obsolete-even-as-revenue-hit-a-record-high/
Fast Company, Tech layoffs this week due to AI (Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork): https://www.fastcompany.com/91538995/tech-layoffs-due-to-ai-this-week-cloudflare-paypal-coinbase-upwork
Bloomberg, South Korea floats citizen dividend from AI profits: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-12/korea-s-massive-ai-boom-triggers-call-for-tech-tax-roiling-market
PYMNTS, Inside a retail store run entirely by AI (Andon Labs / Luna): https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/inside-a-retail-store-run-entirely-by-ai/
Wispr Flow (voice-to-text tool Jason uses): https://wisprflow.ai
Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
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Is Anthropic a Cult? AI Beats ER Doctors & Recursive Self-Improvement | This Week in AI E12
This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and …
Shownotes
This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and Trey Holterman, co-founder and CEO of Tennr, the platform automating the messy paperwork that decides whether millions of patients ever get the care they need.
They break down why AI already beats ER doctors at diagnosis, why Epic is the most hated company in healthcare, what it takes to disrupt healthcare's $5 trillion incumbents, and whether $1.1 trillion in hyperscaler CapEx will pay off before the energy runs out.
Mentioned in the show:
- Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai
- Tennr: https://tennr.com
- Abridge: https://abridge.com
- Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com
- Epic: https://epic.com
- Plaud (NotePin): https://plaud.ai
- Whoop: https://whoop.com
- Function Health: https://functionhealth.com
- Oura: https://ouraring.com
- Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com
- Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai
- Databricks: https://databricks.com
- Harvard / Beth Israel ER study: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study
- Jack Clark on recursive self-improvement: https://jack-clark.net
This Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com
Timestamps:
00:00 Cold open
00:51 Welcome & intro to Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) and Trey Holterman (Tennr)
05:43 Tennr's mission: fixing the U.S. healthcare "black hole"
06:23 Why primary care is changing in the AI era
09:09 The radiologist that wasn't replaced & what AI got right in 2015
15:31 Harvard study: AI beats ER doctors 67% to 55%
20:16 Plaud Pin & the always-on AI in the exam room
22:29 AI scribes, EMR privacy & how Abridge actually works
24:01 Whoop, Aura & when wearable data finally meets the clinic
25:20 Epic, FHIR & the 800-pound gorilla of healthcare
34:21 Disrupting Epic with an open-source EMR play
37:20 The Abridge vs Ambience scribe wars
42:06 Jack Clark's 60% odds on recursive self-improvement by 2028
53:41 Morgan Stanley's $1.1 trillion hyperscaler CapEx forecast
1:04:53 Anthropic's marketing machine & the AI religion thesis
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Cursor's $60B Deal, DeepSeek V4 & the Death of the AI Moat | This Week in AI E11
This week Jason sits down with three founders at the frontier of AI infrastructure, software development, and vertical AI: Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory; Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of …
Shownotes
This week Jason sits down with three founders at the frontier of AI infrastructure, software development, and vertical AI: Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory; Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit; and George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia.
They break down why AI coding agents are more powerful than vibe coding, how voice became the default interface for AI, why LLMs are becoming commoditized like RAM, and what it actually takes to build a moat in 2026.
Mentioned in the show:
- Factory: https://factory.ai
- LiveKit: https://livekit.io
- Hebbia: https://hebbia.com
- Cursor: https://cursor.com
- DeepSeek V4: https://deepseek.com
- SpaceX / xAI: https://x.ai
- Polymarket (Cursor acquisition odds): https://polymarket.com/event/will-spacex-acquire-cursor
- LM Arena (model benchmarks): https://lmarena.ai
- SWE-bench (coding benchmarks): https://swebench.com
- Silicon Valley HBO clip (Son of Anton): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b_D2JgZgY
This Week In AI is made possible by:
PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https/:/paypalopen.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro & AGI debate: where are we really?
02:26 Meet the guests: Matan Grinberg, Russ d'Sa, George Sivulka
03:30 Factory's mission: bringing autonomy to software engineering
04:29 LiveKit's origin: open source WebRTC to ChatGPT voice backbone
07:40 Learned helplessness and the raptor fence: a founder story
10:31 Hebbia: financial superintelligence for capital markets
13:21 SpaceX acquiring Cursor for $60B: the deal breakdown
17:28 Why enterprises can't standardize on one model provider
21:50 The Silicon Valley clip: when AI deletes all the software
23:09 How AI coding tools have changed internal dev workflows
26:28 Moats in the age of vibe coding: what actually protects you
30:12 The relentless iteration promise as a company's core moat
33:40 Slack example: the buy vs. build calculation in 2026
38:10 Deterministic agents and encoding institutional expertise
41:17 LLMs as commoditized infrastructure: where value pools
45:56 DeepSeek V4 drops mid-episode: $3.48 vs. Claude's $25
50:13 AI in financial markets: arbitrage, meme stocks, and ASI
56:58 China blocks Metas acquisition, OpenAI-Microsoft deal redux
58:41 AGI definitions and who wins the US vs. China model race
01:02:13 US open source embarrassment and the talent war
01:05:23 OpenAI's spend vs. revenue: risk of ruin or name of the game?
01:09:14 Apple's new CEO, M-series compute flood, and space data centers
01:12:08 P-doom scores and final thoughts
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Aravind Srinivas & Edwin Chen: The $1B Bootstrap, Apple's AI Edge, and Benchmarks | TWiAI E10
This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the …
Shownotes
This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the co-founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data training company teaching frontier models how to think, which quietly bootstrapped past $1B in revenue without ever raising a dollar.
This Week In AI is made possible by:
PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Cold open
01:00 Welcome & intro to Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen
02:40 Why Perplexity Comet and Perplexity Max are taking off
05:25 Edwin on Surge AI and why "data labeling" is the wrong term
10:47 Tim Cook steps down — what Apple's new CEO should do
13:56 Owning your agent loops: why Apple wins
21:20 "The iPhone is not getting disrupted by AI at all"
23:09 $242B raised in Q1 2026 and the late-stage capital flood
23:55 Edwin on bootstrapping Surge past $1B without raising
25:09 The ChatGPT "one weird trick" story and clickbait models
30:58 Claude Code as a loss leader to dominate token collection
33:30 Are we in the endgame for coding?
35:35 Autocomplete to auto-diff to auto-outcomes
38:54 The death of the no-code movement
41:34 30% headcount growth, 5x revenue, the efficiency playbook
45:41 AI in Hollywood, Gal Gadot, and $70M movies that should cost $200M
50:29 "People don't buy models, they buy products"
57:20 Specialization vs commoditization — what actually accrues value58:00 "LM Arena is a cancer on AI"
63:34 Perplexity's heuristics for measuring user intent65:41 Model Council, Jensen Huang, and orchestrating frontier models
71:23 Most impressive AI experiences — WhisperFlow, Grok on X, Claude Design, and WHOOP
78:29 Hiring at Surge AI and Perplexity
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https://partners.launch.co/
Links Mentioned on the Show:
Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai/
Surge AI: https://surge.ai/
Perplexity Comet: https://comet.perplexity.ai/
Perplexity Max: https://perplexity.ai/max
Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code
Claude Design: https://claude.com/claude-design
OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex
GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot
Cursor: https://cursor.com/
LM Arena: https://lmarena.ai/
Kimi K2: https://www.kimi.com/
DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/
Apple Silicon: https://www.apple.com/mac/m4/
WhisperFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/
WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com/
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