This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis covers startups, tech, markets, media, and all the hottest topics in business and technology. He also interviews the world's greatest founders, operators, investors, and innovators.
Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334
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Today's show:
Your doctor almost certainly isn't testing your insulin. Dr. Mark Hyman sits down with Jason to explain the broken system that Function is fixing, and what 100 million biomarkers say about how sick America actually is.
Learn why insulin beats blood sugar as an early warning for TKTKTK. Why might "normal" lab ranges be unreliable? PLUS, how...
Becki DeGraw on spinouts, IP licensing & clean exits | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics
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Today's show:
Spinouts are everywhere right now, and most founders get the cap table wrong. Jason sits down with Becki DeGraw, partner at Wilson Sonsini, to break down how to do it right, starting with his 80/20 rule for splitting the new cap table and why letting the old company keep too much of it kills your ability to raise.
Becki also covers the legal side: who owns the IP, non-competes between the two companies, and the trap founders fall...
VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333
VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333
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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...
Are AI Agents forming "civilizations" or is this just a psy op? | 2332
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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...
Breaking down Nvidia's Hugging Face and Poolside bets | E2331
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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...
Bill Gates foresees massive AI job loss: these VCs disagree | E2330
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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 Hu...
You Can't Fire a VC From Your Board: Here's Why | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics
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...
China wants you to cheer for the robots taking your job | E2329
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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...
Open source is going to win it all: Harvey proves it | E2328
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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...
Taste is the new programming language (w/ Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian) | AI Basics
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...
Neurosymbolic AI outperforms chatbots and product search | E2327
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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...
Bittensor creator Const on Affine, dTAO, "mining reasoning," and more | E2326
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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...
What we'll learn from Anthropic's $2-$3T IPO | E2325
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Today's show:
*Anthropic is likely headed for the largest IPO in history. A reported 2-3 trillion October debut would blow past SpaceX's recent record. Jason breaks down why the. numbers matter less than what they'll reveal about the entire AI economy.
Then, chats with a pair of founders: one who's selling subscription water filtration systems that will keep microplastics out of...
These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next Unicorns
These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next Unicorns
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Today's show:
*Cytronic built a robotics-first fulfillment network, packing and shipping orders for cents instead of dollars, from small, city-adjacent micro-warehouses. Alex chats with CEO and co-founder Kevin Gibbon about how he can build a fulfillment warehouse for $1.2 million, and why it costs Amazon 50M-100M.
PLUS Eyebot delivers low-cost...
Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass | E2323
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Today's show:
*Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay about the future of AI, and Jason thinks it's his smartest PR move in years.
The thinkpiece, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future," arrives alongside a new open-weight Meta model — Muse Glimmer — and the promise of an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 to come. Zuckerberg's clearly pitc...
How AI splits startups into winners and losers | E2322
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Today's show:
A hedge fund just blew up shorting SaaS stocks. In turns out, the software companies that went all in on AI are bouncing back. Figma's CEO — still riding high on strong revenue — forfeited roughly $46 million in stock awards to ease investor nerves. Twilio posted its strongest quarter in years. Airbnb's CEO credits AI as the single biggest factor in the company's incredible turnaround.
<...Airtable's 80% off value crash: VCs explain why it's still a win | E2321
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Today's show:
*Airtable just sold for $2.25 billion, an 81% drop from its peak of $11.7 billion. On this week's TWiST VC Roundtable, Aditya Agarwal (South Park Commons), Niko Bonatsos (Verdict Capital), and Rick Heitzmann (FirstMark Capital) break down why the venture world sees this as a good outcome, not a financial disaster.
By declining the deal, would Airtable's team have just been delaying the...
How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/ Akemi Tsunagawa) | E2320
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Today's show:
*Before Bespoke's "travel concierge" chatbot could actually hold a conversation, founder/CEO Akemi Tsunagawa and her team quietly answered customers themselves. That "fake it till you make it" strategy paid off. Bespoke landed Narita Airport as a customer based on the strength of their "chatbot" answers, and now the team runs three companies, and is expanding into shipyard robots.
<...Why AI has no taste and how to fix it (w/ Thais Castello Branco) | E2319
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Today's show:
AI models can solve PhD-level math equations and code an app in minutes… So why does everything they design look like identical slop? Thais Castello Branco, founder of Taste Labs, raised $18.5M in seed funding to teach frontier models about aesthetics and outputting quality content. She talks to Jason and Lon about why even frontier models regress to the mean on subjective ta...
Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318
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Today's show:
The FCC's decision to ban Chinese humanoid robots over security concerns is a boon to American startups, which now face a narrower competitive market. But where should we draw the line on security over competition? Menlo Ventures' Deedy Das, Weisburd Pierce's David Weisburd, Plexo Capital's Lo Toney, and LAUNCH's Jason Calcanis broke down how they differentiate between legitimate security concerns and...
While other cultivated meat companies are collapsing, this one turned a profit | E2317
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Today's show:
*Most lab-grown meat companies have already gone under. It's expensive to produce, and there's little demand from real-world consumers. But Tokyo's IntegriCulture is still standing after selling their proprietary serum to cosmetics companies.
On Episode 3 of TWiST from Tokyo, Jason sits down with Dr. Yuki Hanyu, an Oxford-trained chemist who started a DIY meat movement out of a comic convention and...
Why quantum has been "10 years away" for 30 years | E2316
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Today's show:
*For three decades now, we've been told that breakthroughs in quantum computing are right around the corner. So why hasn't anything materialized?
On TWiST in Tokyo, Jason sits down with Yaqumo CEO Kazuhiro Nakashoji and discusses what needed to change (like better algorithms and hardware), and why we may finally be nearing quantum's big moment.
Find out why...
Why this longevity startup raised in Japan, not Silicon Valley | TWiST Tokyo | E2315
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Today's show:
French ex-martial artist Bilal Kharouni is building his longevity startup from Okinawa, one of the world's "blue zones." (These are regions with the most people living long, healthy lives.) In this TWiST taping from Founder University in Tokyo, Jason investigates why a $200K raise in Japan can out-build a $2M raise in San Francisco, and why the best moat for biological...
The AI Securing Your Workforce Before a Mistake Ever Becomes a Breach | E2314
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Today's show:
*Cybersecurity has long focused on cleaning up a system AFTER a breach but Ent founder Brandon Dixon says that's backwards. He just raised a $100M seed round to put an AI agent on everyone's company laptops that catches the risky clicks, leaked files, or rogue agents BEFORE they wreck havoc.
PLUS Clawra creator David Im return swith his new project...
The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313
The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313
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Today's show:
*Andromeda Surgical is building the autonomy layer that could one day allow robots to perform surgery. Rather than building their own intricate, complex hardware, Andromeda uses off-the-shelf arms from a German manufacturer, and focuses on the software that will allow doctors to operate it from...
A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312
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Today's show:
Hustle Fund's Eric Bahn and Chapter One's Jeff Morris Jr. join our venture capital roundtable directly following the news breaking that Stripe wants to buy PayPal. The possible transaction highlights how little interest today's leading startups have in going public any time soon. With host Alex Wilhelm, Bahn and Morris dug into when startups should burn the boats Ă la Fin, physical AI a...
Jason turned $11 and one tweet into 1.1M views | E2311
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Today's show:
*Jason spent $11 building out PodMeme, an AI tool that tracks down the best segments from top podcasts about a specific topic, then stitches them together into a single stream. His post laying out how he did it, featuring a simple screenshot of the product, got all the way to 1.1M views in just a few days.
It's a...
Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310
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Today's show:
*America posted 400,000 farm jobs last year, and fewer than 1% got a single domestic applicant. Danny Bernstein of Reservoir believes it's time to start automating this backbreaking labor, like picking stone fruit in 110°F temperatures. So he built the world's first on-farm robotics incubator on 40 acres of California farmland. Here's why he argues that automating farms isn't just a new opportunity, it's a n...
Why Data Is the Next $1 Trillion Market
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Today's show:
How many startups matter in tech? Fewer than you think. That's why venture capitalists are tripping over themselves to get onto their cap tables, no matter the cost. Why? Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi argues that the Valley has never been more "power-law-pilled" than it is today. Basu Trivedi joined Cendana Capital's Michael Kim and TWiST's Alex Wilhelm to go deep on...
$100T is managed by "human duct tape" | E2308
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Today's show:
*There are $100 trillion in global assets sitting on top of what Hanover Park co-founder/CEO Chris Hladczuk calls "human duct tape": armies of accountants in offices patching together work from various legacy tools (QuickBooks, Excel) that are holding funds' own data hostage. Can all of this be replaced with AI? Find out how their startup went from...
Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307
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Today's show:
Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today's problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy's Aileen Lee, Floodgate's Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau's Ben Lerer joined...
Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventure
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Today's show:
*It's another All Star Summer, as we welcome back some of our favorite guests from throughout "This Week in Startups" history.
Chamath Palihapitiya's development platform 8090 just raised $135 million, and he's using it to go after a $4 trillion market: the software maintenance, migration, and middleware spending that's currently "pure...
Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305
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Today's show:
F1 teams spend up to a third of their budgets on aerodynamics, often utilizing wind tunnels to simulate what happens on the track.
But Lyall Davenport of SKN Systems created a sensor-embedded tape that sticks directly to race cars as they drive around the real world, generating 420M data points per hour. And it comes in at roughly 95...
Why the Future of Video Games is Moving Back to the Dinner Table
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Today's show:
Jason sits down with Brynn Putnam, CEO and founder of Board, to learn more about her company's tabletop gaming console. The pair talks about how to raise capital for yet-to-launch hardware projects, the screen-time debate, and how Board is approaching building or buying IP for its family-friendly games. Next, Alex got Heremus's AJ Piplica on the...
The hottest running app has nothing to do with speed | E2303
This Week In Startups is made possible by:Agree - https://agree.comQuo - https://quo.com/TWiSTSuperhuman - https://superhuman.comToday's show:In this double-header, Jason and Lon chat with Louis Phillips, founder of the gamified running app INTVL, which turns a quick job around the block into a worldwide turf war competition. Find out how he grew the app to over 1 million downloads without any paid ads, just making videos from his home office.PLUS Alex sits down with Alice Zhang, CEO of Verge Labs, which pivoted from making drugs to building the AI infrastructure that helps...
Why SpaceX Buying Cursor Changes Everything
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Today's show:
Anthropic stabbed Cursor in the back. Then SpaceX swooped in with $60 billion. Today, TWiST connects the dots on the biggest deal in AI since the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, and why it's a warning sign for every startup building on top of a frontier model. Jason is joined by Bling Capital's Ben Ling, Banana Capital's...
The Startup Building the First Hotel on the Moon…
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Today's show:
The next SpaceX won't be building rockets; it'll build the first hotel on the Moon. Today on TWiST, GRU Space founder Skyler Chan brings a brick made from lunar soil into the studio and lays out a plan to manufacture on the Moon as early as next year. We get into the science, the business model, and the...
SpaceX IPO Day: What Wall St. and the media missed | E2300
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After watching Elon build out his rocket (and AI) company over the past 20 years, Jason celebrates the SpaceX IPO on a new TWiST. He explains why some investments are evaluated based on earnings and current numbers, while other stocks are bets on expensive visions for the future, and why SpaceX why likely pay off across multiple time horizons.<...
Why the most expensive Seed deals are the cheapest | E2299
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Two days before SpaceX launches the largest IPO in history at a flat $135/share, our VC roundtable drops a scorcher: The top 1% of seed deals might actually be underpriced. Plus: the "Sequoia scam" dual-tranche controversy, tokens-for-equity deals, and whether Claude Fable 5 is a true step function.
Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Michael Downing (Castalia Capital), and Paige Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures) join Alex...
The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298
The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298
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Today's show:
*Schools teach kids to memorize formulas. AI helps them skip thinking entirely. Brilliant founder Sue Khim joins TWiST to tell us how her new AI tutor, Koji, uses the...
