If you read the entire internet multiple times over you would be the smartest person on Earth, so why is it that every frontier model has done that and you still have to read over a simple email ChatGPT writes?

Tune into this week’s episode to hear Maya’s answer: AI models are getting trained too inefficiently and Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 is an example of how training can be more efficient. Kimi K2 is China’s latest open-source model, which was trained for agentic use cases. It’s doing better than anyone expected, and if you’re getting DeepSeek deja vu so are we.

The episode also dives into the AI browser wars and Priya gives her hot take on who she thinks has a right to win between Perplexity’s Comet, Dia by the Browser Company, and ChatGPT Agent.

Finally, the pod debriefs Lovable’s $200M Series A and the future of GPT wrappers.

00:00 AI browser wars

25:56 State of AI in China

52:18 Lovable raises a $200M Series A

What do Love Island and BILT have in common?

They both just had a major breakup this season.

BILT and Wells Fargo officially called it quits, something our OG podcast listeners might remember we predicted back in our very first episode.

So far, BILT is winning the break up. BILT just raised $250M at a $10.75B valuation. Fintech valuations seem to be back, but Maya (aka our resident Fintech guru) has some doubts about how bright BILT’s future in the mortgage market is.

We unpacked why Grok had an identity crisis and started calling itself "MechaHitler”. We also talked about how Grok 4’s benchmarks are impressive, but it still faces an uphill battle for user adoption.

Plus, we break down the drama behind Google's $2.4B deal with Windsurf and what it means for tech employees.

00:00 Intro

01:21 Grok 4 and "MetchaHitler"

27:35 Google's Windsurf deal and the AI talent wars

41:56 BILT's Series C and end of Wells Fargo partnership

🗳️ How did the city with one of the biggest shifts to the right in the 2024 presidential election just vote for a socialist?

This week the pod breaks down Zohran’s rise from 1% in the polls to winning the Democratic nomination for NYC mayor. They discuss how Zohran was able to create a memorable brand and also dive into his most talked about policies:

🚼 universal childcare

🥶 a rent freeze

🛒 a city-run grocery store

💵 raising the minimum wage to $30

Then we get into Elon’s rideshare launch in Austin that he’s been hard launching since 2019, but it was a soft launch with 10 to 20 cars in a fenced-in area, priced at $4.20. Of course. The hosts discuss:

📷 Tesla’s bet on cameras over lidar

🚗 a Tesla dropping a passenger in the middle of an intersection…🤖 Tesla’s other moonshots like the humanoid robot Optimus

00:00 Intro

00:47 NYC mayoral election and Zohran Mamdani

45:56 Tesla's rideshare launch in Austin

This week we sat down with Emir Karabeg, the co-founder of Sim Studio (YC X25), an open-source AI agent builder used by the Department of Defense. We debriefed his YC Demo Day and discussed his insane lore, including:

💥 Building a crypto mining operation at 14 that accidentally triggered an MI6 raid

🧠 Why what he learned at YC was life changing

🚗 How he gave away 10 Teslas with David Dobrik (and one extra by accident)

📞 Leaving in the middle of a UC Berkeley final to take a call from Olaf Carlson-Wee (Coinbase employee #1)

00:00 Intro

01:54 Crypto mining at 14 years old

12:34 Dropping out of Berkeley (for a semester)

22:10 YC Demo Day

30:12 Building Sim Studio

40:54 Founder philosophies

51:29 Reaching AGI

Meta just dropped a casual $14.3 billion on Scale AI for a 49 percent non-voting stake. The hosts are wondering if Zuck is in his desperation era handing out NBA sized contracts to anyone that can rescue Llama. Alexander Wang is now running Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab, and the hosts breaks down what Alex leaving means for Scale. In the short term, employees are getting a massive cash payout, but long term Google, Microsoft, and xAI have already said they’re not renewing contracts with Scale, which opens the door for Scale’s competitors like Snorkel, Surge AI, Mercor, and Turing to step in. Maya floats the idea that Scale may be a product play and not just an acqui-hiring of Alex, if Meta has a bigger plan to use Scale to build continual learning models inside Meta.

Then the episode covers the largest single-day protest in American history. Around 5 million people turned out for the No Kings marches in response to ICE raids and Trump’s executive overreach. Anika shares what it was like on the ground at the SF protest. The hosts also unpack the very public back-and-forth between Gavin Newsom and Trump. They also analyze Trump’s immigration strategy in comparison to Obama’s. Finally, they get into the messy economic and ethical logic (or lack thereof) behind targeting undocumented immigrants who’ve been here for decades.

00:00 Intro

01:18 Meta acquires 49% of Scale AI

37:13 ICE Raids lead to the No Kings protest

The hosts get together at 7am after Anika and Maya both managed to sleep through 6am alarms. This week the trio dives into Nucleus Genomics, the hot IPO market, and Mary Meeker’s AI trend report.

Nucelus Genoomics just launched a new product called Nucleus Embryo. Nucleus Embryo lets IVF parents compare embryos based not only on health markers, but also on traits like height, eye color, and even IQ. The hosts explain the science behind polygenic risk scores (PRS) versus traditional embryo screening for rare diseases. Finally they dive into the many controversies around genetic selection including the accuracy, risks of eugenics, potential for ableism, and the implications of a genetically engineered upper class that gets solidified over multiple generations.

IPOs are so back. Circle, the company behind USDC, had a great IPO, jumping from $31 to $115 a share in a week. The hosts explain how Circle makes its money mostly from interest on the billions in reserves backing the stablecoin, thanks to high Fed rates. The discussion also touches on Circle’s failed SPAC attempt and why crypto might be going mainstream. They also cover Omada Health’s more modest IPO and discuss how digital health IPOs are slowly returning after a long dry spell post the pandemic era. Finally they go over potential IPOs rumored for the rest of the year.

The episode wraps with a breakdown of Mary Meeker’s hyped 2025 AI trend report. They dive into 340 pages of charts, graphs, and the word “unprecedented” (which is used 64 times!). The hosts discuss why ChatGPT adoption has been so much faster than Google. They also discuss how the commodization of AI is going to impact the business model of AI players.

00:00 Intro

03:04 Nucelus Genomics

27:14 IPO market including Circle and Omada Health

40:16 Mary Meeker’s AI trend report

On this episode of Get the Check, the trio kicks things off with a vulnerable chat about work besties (RIP to Maya’s). The hosts cover Grammarly’s relevance post the rise of AI, Rhode’s $1B exit, and why venture capital is taking a page out of the private equity playbook.

Grammarly just raised a billion dollars in funding from General Catalyst, but the twist is they’re not giving up equity. The hosts break down how non-dilutive revenue-based funding rounds work (think Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank). They also discuss why this deal makes sense at Grammarly’s stage. Next, they unpack why Grammarly is still doing $700M ARR and has huge enterprise logos, despite many people now using AI to correct their writing. They end the segment by talking about Grammarly’s future after acquiring Notion competitor Coda and the product adjacencies like email that Grammarly may expand into.

Next, Hailey Bieber gets the check. Her skincare brand Rhode just sold to e.l.f. for a billion dollars after only three years. The hosts break down why they see this deal as a win-win. Rhode gets access to a more mature company that can help their push from e-commerce to Sephora, and e.l.f. gets to diversify their revenue in the face of Trump’s tariffs. E.l.f. also gets access to an older customer base with a higher propensity to spend.

Lastly, the hosts discuss why VC firms are cosplaying as PE firms these days. They explain how acquiring “boring” small businesses (hi, car washes) and layering on AI software has become the latest VC trend. They break down what makes a good AI rollup target (fragmented, low-margin, could be tech enabled but isn’t) and how this new strategy may impact software revenue models down the line.

00:00 Intro

01:34 Grammarly raises $1B

17:07 Rhode acquired by e.l.f

27:35 VC invests in AI rollups

This week on Get the Check Maya, Anika, and Priya are recording with less than ideal lighting and after a 4am night, but nothing keeps them wide awake like the Anthropic’s latest release Claude 4, OpenAI’s biggest acquisition yet, and Google’s I/O developer conference (one IO this week clearly isn’t enough!).The pod starts by discussing Claude 4, which unlike previous models is designed to handle long workflows and have better memory capabilities. The pod discusses if this will be the model that replaces the junior engineer. The hosts also dive into Anthropic's paper about their internal safety testing. They give their take on different scenario's Anthropic outlined including a model blackmailing an engineer with information about his affair and two models discovering Buddhism (kidding, kind of). Maya, Anika, and Priya zoom out and discuss what Anthropic activating its SL3 saftey protocol means.From there, the conversation shifts to OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of io, a hardware startup led by Apple design legend Jony Ive. The pod discusses OpenAI’s push into screenless AI companions and makes some predictions on what the final device will look like. Maya also dives into what challenges OpenAI is going to face going into hardware, with such a quick turnaround.Finally the hosts dive into Google's developer confrence. They go over the biggest product annoucements, including the future of AI search, Gemini 2.5, Veo 3’s video generation, and updates to Google's glasses. The pod breaks down Google's priorities and how they are positioning themselves in the AI ecosystem.

00:00 Intro

01:14 Claude 4

22:31 Open AI acquires IO 

39:46 Google IO 

The hosts of Get the Check kick off another episode by talking about a weekend run, which is misleading, since they’ve only run twice. They debrief the Bay to Breakers run where half the crowd is in costume and the other is naked. This week they talk about three major product launches: OpenAI’s Codex, Airbnb’s experiences and services features, and Uber’s route share.The hosts discuss a trio of recent tech launches, starting with OpenAI’s Codex, which is a model fine tuned for software engineering use cases. They compare it to tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and even Devin, and explain why Codex’s “one-shot” approach might work better for fast bug fixes or product tweaks, but not for collaborative workflows. Next, they pivot to Airbnb’s mid-life identity crisis, where Brian Chesky wants the app to evolve from vacation rentals to your next plumber and maybe even boyfriend being from Airbnb. Finally, they discuss Uber’s route share program, which users on X are calling “a bus” lol.Finally the hosts dive into Trump’s trip to the Middle East. Trump brought an ensemble of tech moguls like Sam Altman and Jensen Huang. The hosts break down Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion pledge toward data centers, defense, and AI, the UAE’s $1.4 trillion investment plan. Of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch (or datacenter), so they also talk about what the US is doing in return including giving gulf states access to the newest Nvidia chips. They briefly discuss why they agree with Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Syria post the end of the Assad regime. Finally, the hosts zoom out and have a conversation about Trump’s overall Middle East strategy.We are almost at 10K on TikTok :) follow us if you haven’t already @getthecheckpod.00:00 Intro02:58 This week’s launches: Codex, Airbnb’s rebrand, Uber route share33:37 Trump’s Middle East trip: AI investments and lifting sanctions on Syria

This week on Get the Check, the hosts discuss Maya postponing this week’s recording to 6AM the morning before the release day. She did have a pretty good excuse though. The hosts dive into OpenAI’s acquisition of Windsurf for $3B. They also discuss Apple’s SVP Eddy Cue testifying in Google’s current DOJ case about their monopoly in search.

Windsurf is an AI powered coding platform used by over a million developers. The hosts talk about why OpenAI is willing to make its biggest acquisition yet for a company that tech Twitter is saying it’s just a VS Code wrapper. They dive into how OpenAI will use this aquisition to launch a better AI powered code completion and maybe even internal progress towards AGI.

~Description intermission where I break the fourth wall and ask you to give us 5 stars and follow us @getthecheckpod for exclusive short form content that we don’t include in the podcast~

Next the hosts talk about the DOJ pressuring Google to sell off Google search. Apple’s SVP of Services recently testified saying that Safari’s number of Google queries dropped for the first time in 20+ years, which led to Google’s stock dropping 7%. The hosts discuss what an AI based future of search means for Google search, which relies on ad revenue from companies that expect users to click on their link not just read Gemini's summary and close the tab.

Finally the hosts discuss Partiful finally launching a monetization strategy beyond merch. Partiful is partnering with Instacart to make group deliveries for parties easy, which sounds great but the hosts break down what the actual margins probably look like and if it’s a long term play. They also give a hot take on the Cut’s viral article about the Partiful founder’s background at Palantir.

00:00 Intro

01:54 OpenAI’s $3B acquisition of Windsurf

23:10 The future of Google Search

40:37 Partiful’s new monetization strategy