This Week in Startups

VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333

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Today's show:

Are we one step closer to data centers in space? Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six and Paige Doherty of Behind Genius Ventures break it down what it would take.

Plus investor interest is surging in Physical AI companies. Paige explains why she backs applications of physical AI over general-purpose robotics, and how her thesis on multimodal AI led to the largest check she's ever written.

We then dive into the Pentagon's rollout of ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government. And Katelin gives us her insight into how VCs are investing in Europe and the regulations behind the scenes.

Guests:

Katelin Holloway on X: https://x.com/katelin_cruse

Seven Seven Six: https://sevensevensix.com/

Paige Doherty on X: https://x.com/paigefinnn

Behind Genius Ventures: https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/

Full Transcript and Summary, powered by Plaud

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Related Links:

Department of War adds ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government: https://fortune.com/2026/09/01/pentagon-chatgpt-grok-government-military-ai-members-pete-hegseth-defense-department/

OpenAI for Government: https://openai.com/global-affairs/introducing-openai-for-government/

Starshield — SpaceX's government/defense arm: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/

UN work on LAWS (Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems): https://disarmament.unoda.org/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/background-on-laws-in-the-ccw/

European Commission designates ChatGPT a VLOSE: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-designates-chatgpt-reddit-roblox-under-digital-services-act

Commission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1772

Euronews on why a chatbot that searches the live web counts as a search engine: https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/08/31/eu-places-chatgpt-reddit-and-roblox-under-strictest-digital-safety-rules

Entrepreneur First: https://www.joinef.com/posts/introducing-the-bridge/

Henrick Johansson, the European VC persona: https://x.com/compliantvc

Starcloud — orbital data centers: https://www.starcloud.com/

Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260821884035/en/Starcloud-Raises-$250-Million-at-$2.3-Billion-Valuation-to-Scale-AI-with-Orbital-Data-Centers

"From Sputnik to Starship: Estimating the experience curve of space launch technology" https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/7/pgag217/8732400

Cambridge Bennett Schoo: https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/is-space-trade-the-next-global-transport-revolution/

Crunchbase News: physical AI startups raised $47.4B across 521 deals in H1 2026: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups-robotics-aerospace-h1-2026/

Crunchbase News on record defense-tech funding: https://news.crunchbase.com/defense-tech/startup-venture-funding-all-time-record-ai-anduril/

Jensen Huang's prediction: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/executive-insights/

Zipline: https://www.flyzipline.com/

Nox Metals: https://www.noxmetals.com/

CNBC: Anthropic changes its data retention policy: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/anthropic-data-retention.html

Bloomberg on the plan to let enterprises hold the 30-day window: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-20/anthropic-plans-to-change-data-retention-policy-for-advanced-ai

Plaud — sponsor; the wearable AI note-taker → https://plaud.ai/twist (code TWIST for 10% off)

Harmonic: https://harmonic.ai/twist

Timestamps:

0:00 Why making it to Fund IV is when it gets real

7:54 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

9:24 Pentagon rolls out ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government

10:49 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST

11:53 Paige on defense tech and three years at Northrop Grumman

13:40 Katelin: The bottleneck used to be winning the contract, now it's surviving one

16:13 Autonomous weapons, robot dogs, and the Boston Dynamics conversation in Paris

19:07 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app

22:03 EU designates ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the DSA

24:54 Katelin's contrarian take: Europe is undercapitalized

29:56 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist

31:07 Starcloud raises $250M at a $2.3B valuation

53:06 Competing with Elon: the single point of failure for the whole space economy

57:49 Physical AI raised ~$47B in the first half of 2026

1:03:42 Jason's Zipline regret and the death of "hardware is hard"

1:07:07 Is "unc" a compliment? A Gen X / millennial / Gen Z / Gen Alpha

1:09:39 Anthropic reverses its data retention policy after enterprise pushback

1:12:18 Katelin on data custody: "That's not a procurement question"

1:15:31 Back to on-prem: Go.AI, the Go1, and vertical LLMs

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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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Today's show:

Hugging Face's $399 Microduck and the art of companies taking on side quests. Then, we get into Dwarkesh Patel's "The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations," which blew up online this weekend. Jason calls the "secret AI civilization" framing deliberate PR, and thinks it's inflammatory enough that someone might attack a data center over it.

Then, Anders Forslund of Heart Aerospace shows off the X1, a battery-powered electric airliner designed for regional flights that can fly for 30 minutes on just $5 of juice. PLUS, we've got John Yu of Bitsec explaining how his subnet project outperformed Fable 5 in website vulnerability checks.

Guests:

Anders Forslund on X: https://x.com/AndersForslund1?s=2

Heart Aerospace: https://www.heartaerospace.com/

John Yu on X: https://x.com/yubrew

Bitsec: https://sentios.io/ & https://sentios.io/

Relevant Links:

MicroDuck: https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/

Dwarkesh Patel, "The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations," https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/openai-huggingface

Dwarkesh's launch thread on X: https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/2093833419377815719

METR's independent investigation of the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident: https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/

X1 first flight announcement — https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-completes-first-flight-of-world-s-largest-electric-aircraft

JSX (JetSuiteX) — https://www.jsx.com/

Pilatus PC-12 —https://www.pilatus-aircraft.com/en/fly/pc-12

Surf Air — https://www.surfair.com/

Zcash → https://z.cash/

Timestamps:

0:00 Is Hugging Face's Microduck the greatest side quest ever?

5:31 Jason puts Clem Delangue and Jensen Huang in charge of AI PR

11:20 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

18:55 Top story: Dwarkesh Patel's "The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations"

19:22 Why agents act like people: they were trained on us

19:30 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou

21:49 "I know good PR when I see it"

23:11 The prompt Jason says OpenAI should have written instead

26:44 The data center backlash and the politicians who will flip

30:07 Rippling - Don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.

33:19 Guest: Anders Forslund, Heart Aerospace, and the X1's first flight

39:40 Turboprops vs. jets and the regional routes America lost

42:33 JSX, Santa Monica Airport, and 5,000 underused airports

44:54 Why Boeing won't build this: the innovator's dilemma

53:14 Guest: John Yu, Bitsec — Bittensor Subnet 60

55:01 How the subnet works: miners, validators, $10K a day

57:17 Bitsec vs. a frontier model: 160+ vulnerabilities to 60

59:37 Was the agent civilization story a pre-IPO PR play?

1:05:10 Sentios.io and continuous coverage

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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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Today's show:

*Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, just days after quietly licensing Poolside's coding model for $6 billion+. On TWiST, Jason lays out why this is actually the biggest AI story of the year. Nvidia plans to offer enterprises unmetered, unlimited on-prem compute, pulling them away from reliance on Anthropic and OpenAI's frontier models and products.

PLUS we're chatting with Halter founder & CEO Craig Piggott about how his company helps farmers optimize their land use via solar-powered AI-driven cattle collars. AND Hop Aero CEO and co-founder Matija Milenovic shows us Rook, his autonomous hypersonic cargo rocket that can launch from a shipping container and deliver cargo up to 450 miles away in about 15 minutes. Finally, Jason and Lon explain why you never post Slop on the timeline.

Guests:

Craig Piggott on X: https://x.com/craig_piggott

Halter: https://www.halterhq.com/

Matija Milenovic on X: https://x.com/mat_milenovic

Hop Aero: https://hopaero.com/

Relevant Links:

OpenAI Open Letter: https://openai.com/collective-cyberdefense/

OpenAI Hugging Face report: https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/

OpenAI Jalapeño report: https://openai.com/index/jalapeno-first-results/

Dario Amodei-Gavin Baker tweet thread: https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758816376807762

TechCrunch: Nvidia-Hugging Face deal: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/nvidia-closes-in-on-hugging-face-acquisition/

TechCrunch coverage of Halter: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/04/unpacking-peter-thiels-big-bet-on-solar-powered-cow-collars/

Dealroom: Sir Peter Back on Rocket Lab: https://app.dealroom.co/news/note/sir-peter-beck-on-rocket-lab-s-no-money-so-we-have-to-think-playbook-from-a-60k-new-zealand-start-up-to-an-end-to-end-space-company

WSJ: Druckenmiller op-ed: "Let the Bond Market Speak": https://www.wsj.com/opinion/let-the-bond-market-speak-81529d74

NOTUS: Druckenmiller's WSJ op-ed was written with AI: https://www.notus.org/media/stanley-druckenmillers-wsj-op-ed-bessent-ai

WaPo: Wall Street Journal defends Druckenmiller op-ed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/08/25/wall-street-journal-says-ai-generated-op-ed-didnt-breach-its-standards/

Photon Matrix Laser Mosquito Killer: https://photonmatrixlab.com/

"The Wizard of the Kremlin" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7ctYp3zQVA

"King & Conqueror" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anS9xQEPTsU

"Lanterns" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UIBOsuUwc4

"Rebel Ridge" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF3gZicntIw

Alpaka Bravo Sling Max 2 bag: https://alpakagear.com/products/bravo-sling-max-v2

No Agenda podcast: https://www.noagendashow.net/

THR: John C. Dvorak obit: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/john-dvorak-dead-tech-journalist-no-agenda-inside-track-1236657317/

Timestamps:

0:00 The 100+ company open letter on cyberdefense

9:48 DigitalOcean - Want to see what building on a true AI-native platform looks like? Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.

16:46 Why some models are "unsafe at any latency"

19:44 Craig Piggott of Halter joins the show

21:03 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io

26:09 How do you add cows to Starlink?

31:26 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.com/business

47:52 Founder-led hyper-local sales motion

53:15 Remember John C. Dvorak

58:27 Matija Milenovic of Hop Aero joins

59:53 Sending out autonomous swarms in the Indo-Pacific

1:11:26 Nvidia's mega-Hugging Face deal

1:16:32 Nvidia's "unmetered" play against Anthropic and OpenAI

1:29:47 How letting AI write for you is like lip syncing

1:33:44 Laser-guided mosquito defense system

1:36:32 Lon's streaming picks

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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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Today's show:

*Bill Gates dropped a 6,000 word warning: AI will be "the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst sort of injustice." The Microsoft icon has an AI agenda for the US: new national institutions, AI use taxes, and jobs legally reserved for humans only.

Our VC roundtable guests — Sheel Mohnot (Better Tomorrow Ventures), Dave McClure (Practical Venture Capital), and Hussein Kanji — push back hard. Is taxing profits a better fix for AI taking jobs than taxing the tokens themselves?

PLUS: Meta's $17B kids safety settlement… does it go far enough? Why does Stripe want OpenRouter? A peek at the VC's actual portfolio mark-ups. AND begun, the AI agent wars have. Our panel chooses between OpenClaw, Instinct, and Grok Bot.

Guests

Sheel Mohnot on X: https://x.com/pitdesi

Better Tomorrow Ventures: https://www.btv.vc/

Dave McClure on X: https://x.com/davemcclure

Practical Venture Capital: https://practicalvc.com/

Hussein Kanji on X: https://x.com/hkanji

Hoxton Ventures: https://hoxtonventures.com/

Relevant Links

GatesNotes: "The turbulent AI era is here": https://www.gatesnotes.com/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make

NPR: Meta settlement coverage: https://www.npr.org/2026/08/26/nx-s1-5944781/meta-settlement-child-safety-lawsuit

TechCrunch: Stripe agrees to buy OpenRouter: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/16/stripe-will-reportedly-acquire-ai-gateway-startup-openrouter-for-7b/

Skild AI S1 Demo: https://www.skild.ai/blogs/s1

Instinct AI agent (waitlist): https://instinct.co/

TechCrunch: Instinct coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/24/instincts-powerful-ai-assistant-is-raising-privacy-and-security-concerns/

CNBC: OpenAI CFO says IPO is coming in 2027: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/open-ai-ipo-timing-2027-friar.html

Basis: https://www.getbasis.ai/

TaxGPT: https://www.taxgpt.com/

Cusp AI: https://cusp.ai/

Abacus: https://goabacus.co/

Micro1: https://www.micro1.ai/

Mottu: https://mottu.com.br/

EquityBee: https://equitybee.com/

Kiva: https://www.kiva.org/

Timestamps:

0:00 It's Hussein's first time on the VC Roundtable!

2:09 Gates says "turbulent era" for AI is here

8:56 Microloans, Kiva, and "universal basic income"

9:23 Thanks to our partner, Lightfield, the AI-native CRM that updates itself, so you never have to! Try it for free at https://lightfield.app

13:00 Why sole proprietorships may be AI's biggest beneficiary

20:29 Got a new business idea? Northwest helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more, with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

21:00 Should the gov't take a stake in AI labs?

30:24 Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.

32:44 Meta's $17.1B settlement

45:14 Is anything still fundable outside of AI?

46:29 Stripe and SpaceX deals

55:54 Skild AI's pancake flipping demo

59:49 Sheel's Hottest Takes

1:04:37 Dave's Charts

1:09:07 Who loses money when there are no IPOs?

1:16:49 The Agent Wars heat up

1:24:56 Everyone's favorite investments

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Thank you to our partners:

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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

Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

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Today's show:

Can a founder actually fire a board member? Short answer: almost never. And the reason why may surprise a lot of founders.

On this edition of Legal Basics, Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw joins Jason for a deep dive into who really controls your board, when investors start earning seats, and the differences between a board member and a board observer. Check out an episode that might just save your cab table someday.

PLUS they walk through the full lifecycle of your startup's board, exploring what it actually controls, when founders should start adding their own board members, the ownership threshold that means investors will start asking for seats, and how boards evolve from seed rounds to Series B>

Timestamps:

0:06 Welcome back to Legal Basics

1:47 When should a seed stage founder add their first board member?

7:47 From founder-controlled to "balanced"

10:31 Private vs. public company board pay

12:18 Do board members get expenses covered?

14:34 Why observers need a confidentiality provision

15:36 The "sign in the next 24 hours" pressure tactic

17:46 How to remove a director

24:01 When to use "Pled" vs. "Pleaded"

Check out all of the Startup Basics episodes here:

https://thisweekinstartups.com/basics

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how old a movie has to be for me to be able to show a part of it on youtube

Generally 10 seconds or less of a film clip can fall under fair use for commentary or criticism — which is how most podcasts and talk shows use clips without issue. But there's no hard legal rule based on age.

What actually matters more than age is fair use, which considers:

Purpose — commentary, criticism, education = stronger fair use case

Amount used — shorter = safer; a 5-10 second clip for reaction/discussion is generally fine

Effect on market — your clip shouldn't replace the original

In practice for YouTube specifically:

Most major studios have Content ID systems that will flag clips regardless of movie age — even 100-year-old films if the rights holder has registered them

Public domain is the real safe zone — films from 1927 or earlier are generally in the public domain in the US. Some films from the 1928-1963 range are also public domain if copyright wasn't renewed

Disney, Warner Bros., Universal etc. actively enforce even very old films

For a show like TWiST showing a short reaction clip — 5-10 seconds with clear commentary context is the industry standard and rarely gets actioned. But age alone won't protect you.

Today's show:

*A humanoid robot ran the 100m in 9.39, breaking the human Usain Bolt's world record, while an entire stadium cheered. Jason thinks Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games aren't a science fair, or a fun exhibition, but the best AI PR campaign on Earth. While Americans debate the data centers that train the robot brains, China is already turning them into a spectacle and world-class entertainment.

Find out what Jason thinks America can do to catch up… and why he believes there will be 1 billion Optimus robots deployed by the year 2036.

PLUS on an all-news TWiST, hot takes on the potential $13B Hugging Face sale (to a mystery buyer), why founders should always "buy the threat," analyzing Sam Altman's "I'm listening and I hear you" face, and are kill drones already in operation around the world? We're digging in to how close the real world is to mirroring the "Terminator" films.

Relevant Links

CBS coverage of World Humanoid Robot Games: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-robot-usain-bolt-sprint-run-record-faster/

Bloomberg coverage of World Humanoid Robot Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lsrUAdcPPE

X-Humanoid: https://www.x-humanoid.com/

Tesla Optimus on X: https://x.com/Tesla_Optimus

Trailer for Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_19pRsZRiz4

Bloomberg: Hugging Face exploring sale: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-23/hugging-face-gauging-interest-for-potential-sale-business-insider-says

Fortune: Stripe acquires OpenRouter: https://fortune.com/2026/08/16/stripe-7-billion-deal-ai-firm-openrouter-acquisition/

InfoWorld: OpenAI acqui-hires OPenClaw founder: https://www.infoworld.com/article/4132731/openai-hires-openclaw-founder-as-ai-agent-race-intensifies-2.html

David Senra podcast w/ Sam Altman: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/sam-altman

Harvey Tenet Research Preview: https://www.harvey.ai/blog/post-training-update-harvey-tenet

David Sacks comments on Harvey's Tenet (from X): https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2090790063047168473

CNBC: Iran linked to UK cyberattack: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/23/small-uk-power-plant-shut-down-after-iran-linked-cyberattack-report.html

NYT: A drone killed 3 Ukrainians: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/europe/russia-drones-autonomous-ai-kill-ukraine-war.html

Forbes: Eric Schmidt secretly testing AI drones: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2024/06/06/eric-schmidt-is-secretly-testing-ai-military-drones-in-a-wealthy-silicon-valley-suburb/

Restream: https://restream.io/

Kimbal Musk's Nova Sky Stories: https://novaskystories.com/

IKEA: Plug-in Solar Panels: https://www.ikea.com/be/en/energy-services/plug-in-solar/

Deadline: "Mandalorian and Grogu" box office: https://deadline.com/2026/08/star-wars-mandalorian-grogu-disney-release-date-1237040464/

THR: Dave Filoni leading Lucasfilm: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/star-wars-mandalorian-grogu-box-office-franchise-low-1236604973/

Star Wars: Starfighter first look: https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-starfighter-ryan-gosling

Star Wars Theory: "Vader" fan series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey68aMOV9gc

Timestamps:

0:00 Jason got a fresh Optimus demo

1:35 Robots are breaking human sports records

3:39 America's messaging problem vs. China's elite PR machine

11:07 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist

12:08 Jason got a fresh Optimus demo

19:21 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) - Quo gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free and get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/TWiST

28:09 Who's going to buy Hugging Face and why?

28:56 Conservation Fund - Find out more about how the Conservation Fund is protecting land, wildlife, and our shared access to the great outdoors while also providing economic opportunities. Visit https://conservationfund.org

31:35 How OpenAI killed OpenClaw

39:08 Sam Altman wants to make a platform, not a product

41:19 The "Castles and Keeps" metaphor for sovereign AI

49:27 UBI isn't happening but we could raise the minimum wage

58:47 Embracing redundancy and self-reliance

1:10:53 Is Star Wars at a historic low point (and Lon's Worst Take)

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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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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

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Today's show:

Jason's been saying it for years now (and we've got an All In clip from 2023 to prove it). Open source will win the AI race. This week gives us a major evidence point, as $11B legal AI company Harvey released its own in-house model, trained on an open-weight Kimi K3 base. Harvey made a proprietary specialized solution without having to risk sharing its precious expert-compiled data with the major frontier labs.

PLUS we're checking out the FREE AI dictation app Willow with co-founder Allan Guo, and finding out how he plans to compete with giants like Wispr Flow and Apple. AND we've got the Stanford student who built an automated golf cart and gave luminaries like Jensen Huang and Sam Altman rides around campus.

Guests

Allan Guo on X: https://x.com/_allanguo

Willow: https://willowvoice.com/

Ethan Goodhart: https://x.com/EthanGoodhart

Sign up for the Wind TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/zZqmhhwf

Relevant Links

CNBC: OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027": https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/open-ai-ipo-timing-2027-friar.html

OpenAI Zero Data Retention Pledge: https://openai.com/index/our-commitment-to-zero-data-retention

TWIST (June 2026): Jason comments on OpenAI and training data: https://youtu.be/o3eow1nTrcI?si=orungk7OmplOuyio&t=742

All In podcast (Feb 2023): Jason comments on open source vs. frontier models: https://youtu.be/PVgBWV2bvLs?si=j6y7sHS0wx9q09oa&t=5173

Harvey: https://www.harvey.ai/

Harvey Tenet Research Preview: https://www.harvey.ai/blog/post-training-update-harvey-tenet

Fireworks AI: https://fireworks.ai/

Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/

Pipedrive: https://www.pipedrive.com/

Nvidia Jetson Thor: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-thor/

OpenAI shares Wind golf cart clip: https://www.tiktok.com/@openai/video/7645336713472134431

Starlink Mini: https://starlink.com/mini-product-us?srsltid=AfmBOorzM7arxhdzYAdDpH6RGD4LLg9WV_BFnEoLuYieuHuGSCjQTE1Y

Toro mowers: https://www.toro.com/

404 Media: https://www.404media.co/

Punchbowl News: https://punchbowl.news/

Semafor: https://www.semafor.com/

Skift: https://skift.com/

Newcomer: https://www.newcomer.co/

Deirdre Bosa on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deebosa

Electrek: Genesis GV90 review: https://electrek.co/2026/08/20/genesis-gv90-luxury-coach-doors-images/

Toyota Alphard gallery: https://global.toyota/en/mobility/toyota-brand/gallery/alphard.html

The Clash "London Calling" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfK-WX2pa8c

Timestamps:

0:00 What is Jason's Grok Bot up to?

5:17 Systems over goals

9:43 Superhuman - Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing, and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Sign up to get the best in AI at https://Superhuman.com

13:08 OpenAI will go public soon

14:19 Top line ARR matters way less than churn

20:43 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST

29:55 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app

30:52 Harvey launches Tenet

34:32 "Open source is going to win it all"

35:58 Allan Guo of Willow joins

39:18 Managing a single source of truth across a team

47:00 Lon and Jason love the Toyota Alphard

51:00 Stanford student and AV expert Ethan Goodhart joins

1:00:09 How Ethan got Jensen Huang to go for a ride

1:00:37 Punk Rock 101

1:06:24 Phoebe Gates' secret Harvard class

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X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

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The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google Cloud!

Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide

Astrocade is building super-intelligence for the interactive world. Build the future of fun: https://www.astrocade.com/careers

Today's show:

*Making a video game once required a studio, an engine, and a team of five or more people working for six months. But with Astrocade, users just describe the game they'd like to play and share, and an AI assembles it from minutes, ready to publish to a TikTok-style feed.

Still, founder and CEO Amir Sadeghian tell us AI can't actually build a great game all on its own. The magic isn't just in the automation, but the user's creativity and good taste.

Amir demos how the app turns simple sentences and descriptions into full video games, explains why frontier models still regress to the mean rather than pushing boundaries, and unpacks how the game's human-in-the-loop workflow can turn even generic ideas into something original and fun.

Guest:

Amir Sadeghian on X: https://x.com/_amirabs

Astrocade: https://www.astrocade.com/

Relevant Links

Flappy Bird: https://flappybird.io/

Plants vs. Zombies: https://www.ea.com/ea-studios/popcap/plants-vs-zombies

MrBeast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast

Google's Nano Banana Pro: https://nanabananapro.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 Welcome to AI Basics, presented by Google Cloud

0:44 Amir Sadeghian, CEO of Astrocade joins

1:08 What is Astrocade and how does it work?

2:58 From describing to publishing: the TikTok for games

3:37 Amir's origin story: four continents, one vision

5:11 Why making games used to require years of training

6:46 The watermelon juice theory of product friction

7:35 Taste as the new programming language

14:18 Personalizing games with your own images

15:23 From consumer to prosumer: can you make a living?

16:22 Astrocade's creator fund and new creator economy

17:07 Open roles at Astrocade

18:10 Why play is the most universal human language

19:43 Google Cloud, Gemini, and wrapping up

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Thank you to our partners!

Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide

Astrocade is building super-intelligence for the interactive world. Build the future of fun: https://www.astrocade.com/careers

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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Today's show:

Frontier AI models can ace PhD-level exams, but it's still bad at tracking down the product you want in the style that suits you. Onton's Zach Hudson tell us that the problem is that models are a black box.

His solution? A neurosymbolic model, Ontology 1, that learns about your taste and preferred aesthetic over time, then produces product searches tailored specifically to you, rather than just using keywords and relevant tags. How do neurosymbolic models work, and how does Onton understand your prompts and favorite design trends? And why aren't the frontier labs working on neurosymbolic models of their own? Zach joins Jason and Lon to discuss.

PLUS, following a record-smashing SpaceX IPO, Ashi Dissanayake of Spacium makes the case that the real bottleneck in space isn't launching rockets off the ground any more. It's refueling in orbit.

Guests

Zach Hudson on X: ****https://x.com/nosduhz

Onton: https://onton.com/

Spacium: https://spaceium.com/

Spacium on X: https://x.com/SpaceiumInc

Relevant Links

Poolside's journey to AGI: https://poolside.ai/vision/purpose

Startup Archive: Sam Altman on the Paul Graham advice that saved OpenAI: https://www.startuparchive.org/p/sam-altman-on-the-paul-graham-advice-that-saved-open-ai-always-make-an-api

Kelly Wearstler: https://www.kellywearstler.com/

Ennis House: https://franklloydwright.org/site/ennis-house/

Los Feliz Living: Ennis House profile: https://www.losfelizliving.com/los-feliz-historic-homes/ennis-house-los-feliz-hcm-149

Indiewire: Ennis-inspired "The Studio" offices: https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/the-studio-production-design-interview-seth-rogen-1235114365/

Monocle Magazine: https://monocle.com/

Spaceium on Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/spaceium-inc

Orbit Fab's RAFTI: https://www.orbitfab.com/rafti/

James Webb Space Telescope: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/

Houzz: https://www.houzz.com/

Timestamps: 0:00 Zach Hudson joins: What is "neurosymbolic search"

4:03 Ontology 1 isn't a black box

6:31 Who is using Onton?

9:36 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist

11:35 Could neurosymbolic models reach AGI?

13:19 Jason loves Wright's Ennis House

17:03 The shape of AI companies is changing

19:28 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!

22:32 UGC as a data moat

26:03 The Dead Internet Theory

28:13 Ashi Dissanayake of Spacium joins

29:52 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST

31:50 Storables vs. cryogenics: the zero-boil-off breakthrough

34:11 All kinds of propulsion requires refueling

36:09 Getting more value from LEO to GEO

38:28 Moving at rocket speed

44:54 Why demand is so acute

49:37 The investing climate for space, post-SpaceX

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

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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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Today's show:

We've been going deep on Bittensor and how it works all year on TWiST, meeting with the creators of some of our favorite subnets, and exploring how the system decentralizes inference, compute, and storage. Now, on this very special episode, Jason and Lon welcome Bittensor co-founder Jason Steeves (aka "Const") to the show.

He gives us a quick tour of the project's first principles, before diving into how subnets incentivize miners to contribute, how dTAO turned the creation of subnets into its own competition, how Const says he employs "the internal machinery of capitalism" to rank subnects, and his latest project, Subnet 120 (aka Affine).

Find out what the OpenTensor Foundation actually does, go inside the Templar controversy, and learn why Const is trying to make himself increasingly irrelevant.

Guest

Jacob Steeves on X: https://x.com/const_reborn

Bittensor: https://www.bittensor.com/

Affine: https://affine.io/

Relevant Links

Original Bittensor whitepaper: https://bittensor.com/whitepaper

Bittensor governance and documentation: https://www.bittensor.com/docs

Beginner's Guide to Dynamic TAO: https://www.tao.media/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-dynamic-tao-dtao/

Prime Intellect: TOPLOC: https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/toploc

Engy (SN53): https://engy.ai/

Lium (SN51): https://www.lium.io

Targon (SN4): https://targon.com/

Templar (SN3): https://www.tplr.ai/

Hippius (SN75): https://hippius.com/

MakerDAO: https://makerdao.com/

Stillcore Capital: https://stillcorecapital.com/

Timestamps: 0:00 The origin of Bittensor (and the name Const)

10:48 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

13:55 From Bitcoin mining to mining intelligence

19:33 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.

30:17 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist

32:37 What is a subnet?

33:35 Forcing honest inference from bad actors

37:14 Building a subnet is harder than it looks

40:42 Understanding dTAO

51:57 Where the registration TAO actually goes

1:02:57 All about the Conviction "rug pull"

1:15:19 How Const is making himself irrelevant

1:17:33 The "Buy One TAO" philosophy

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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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