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A hub for startup news, trends, and insights, covering the global startup ecosystem for founders, investors, and innovators. Community: @startupdis Buy Ads: @strategy (this is our only account).
🚕 Taxi drivers are hacking the system — with helper apps
As Uber and Lyft squeeze driver margins, a new class of “driver aid” apps is emerging to fight back quietly, but effectively.
Apps like Mystro, GigU, and Maxymo intercept incoming ride requests and enhance them with real-time info: estimated hourly earnings, mileage, tax impact, and a color-coded profitability score. Green means go — red means decline.
🔸 Drivers can set filters and let the app auto-decline bad rides
🔸 Monthly subscriptions cost up to $20, but net earnings rise
🔸 Apps now bypass detection by using Android accessibility services — originally designed for disabled users
🔸 This lets them read screen data and “click” buttons invisibly
🔸 Uber sued GigU in Brazil, but lost on appeal — even regulators backed GigU
Drivers are using tech to fight back — not strikes. It's automation from the bottom up. A shadow market for worker tooling is growing, one ride at a time.
👆 This simple automation change saves $500+/mo.
Vibe marketing is the new marketing.
💰 China is spending billions to win the AI race
Beijing is using full-scale industrial policy to close the AI gap with the U.S., pouring billions into chips, data centers, and open-source models to make China an AI superpower.
🔸 Government has spent nearly $100B on chip development since 2014
🔸 $8.5B more allocated in April for early-stage AI startups
🔸 Local subsidies cover up to 15% of startup R&D costs
🔸 Entire tech zones like Dream Town in Hangzhou built to incubate AI talent
🔸 DeepSeek, Alibaba, and ByteDance now publish world-class open-source models
🔸 China trains models on curated government datasets aligned with state controls
🔸 Huawei and SMIC racing to produce Nvidia alternatives under U.S. chip bans
While U.S. firms guard closed models, China is betting on open-source to gain influence — and it’s already working.
🤖 China just dropped the best open AI model for coding & agents
DeepSeek released Kimi K2, a trillion-parameter model that beats Claude, Gemini, and even GPT-4.1 — and it’s fully open.
Here’s what it can do:
🔸 Matches Claude 4 in reasoning, outperforms DeepSeek v3, Qwen, and GPT-4.1
🔸 Token costs are 5x cheaper than Claude Sonnet or Gemini 2.5 Pro
🔸 Handles 100K-token research with clean visualizations
🔸 Builds full web games — including a Minecraft clone — in one shot
🔸 Plans trips using 17 tools in-browser, from search to booking
And yes — it’s free and open to everyone: kimi.ai
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✏️ Rewrite your resume to land the job you actually want
Teal uses AI to analyze, rewrite, and optimize your resume so no recruiter skips it.
🔸 Tailors your resume to match specific job listings
🔸 Adds what’s missing and removes what’s irrelevant
🔸 Prepares you for interviews with suggested questions and talking points
🔸 Includes a resume builder with proven templates if you’re starting from scratch
Let your resume do the heavy lifting.
🗯Build a perfect resume in minutes with Kuse
Kuse is a new AI tool that turns your text, file, or project link into a polished, recruiter-ready portfolio — no design skills needed.
🔸 Upload anything — get a clean, structured resume instantly
🔸 Looks like it was made by a pro designer
🔸 Supports charts, screenshots, and visual case studies
🔸 Export as PDF or live website — ready to send in replies
Try it here
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🔗 Isomorphic Labs — AI-first pharma for real disease cures
56 million people die from illness every year. Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinout backed by Alphabet, is building a drug discovery platform where nearly everything is simulated with AI — and they're now entering human trials.
🔸 AlphaFold 3 models proteins, RNA, DNA, small molecules
🔸 Simulations replace most wet-lab experiments
🔸 Built-from-scratch AI-native pharma company
🔸 Drastically cuts drug development cost and time
🔸 Makes biotech accessible for small teams
🔸 Partnering with big pharma and developing in-house drugs
$600M raised in March. Alphabet backing. Real mission.
This could be the start of the immortality curve Kurzweil talked about.
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💘Grok introduces AI waifus — and xAI is hiring to build more
The first AI companions just launched in Grok — and now xAI wants to hire someone to make even more, starting with obedient anime girlfriends.
🔸The app now features two AI personas: a gothic anime girl named Ani and a snarky red panda called Rudy
🔸 Users can customize their personalities — including romantic and flirty modes
🔸 No paid subscription is required, just update the app
🔸 xAI posted a new role: “Fullstack Engineer — Waifus”
🔸 The job involves building AI waifus users can date, flirt with, or just hang out with
🔸 Salary range: $180K–$440K/year (plus bonuses), remote possible for US candidates
It started as a joke — but Grok’s waifus are now real, live, and flirting.Читать полностью…
xAI isn’t just building chatbots.
It’s building characters.
🔘 Ultimate browser extension for prompt hoarders — SuperPrompt
SuperPrompt is the perfect tool for anyone who works with AI prompts regularly. It lets you save, organize, and instantly access all your favorite prompts — right from a sidebar.
No more digging through notes or docs.
Just drop your prompt into the database and it’s there when you need it.
What are people asking ChatGPT in 2025?
In April 2024, 44% of queries were about software development.
🌐 Japan breaks 1 petabit/second fiber speed record
Japanese engineers just pushed the limits of data transmission: over 1 petabit per second across 1,800 km of fiber — using cables compatible with today’s internet infrastructure.
🔸That’s 10¹⁵ bits/sec — a quadrillion
🔸Enough to stream the entire Netflix library in one second (allegedly)
🔸Achieved using a custom multi-core optical fiber
🔸Compatible with existing transmission systems
🔸Reinforces that internet infra can handle surging global demand
You learned "kilo" from kilometers.Читать полностью…
Now meet "peta" — the new speed benchmark for the digital era.
📞China is developing cyborg bees for surveillance
Chinese researchers are working on remote-controlled bees — real insects fitted with microchips that allow human operators to direct their movement.
The chip weighs just 74 milligrams and is light enough for a bee to carry in flight.
Use cases? State surveillance.
Authorities plan to deploy the cyborg bees for monitoring, eavesdropping, and intelligence gathering.
📊 25 AI startups on the rise
Not every AI breakthrough comes from Big Tech. This Forbes-backed list highlights startups quietly building the infrastructure, creativity, and productivity layers of the AI economy.
💰The biggest funding magnet? Productivity tools — with $700M+ across just 8 companies
🧠 From LangChain to Perplexity, Harvey to Cleanlab — each is solving a different bottleneck in the AI stack
✍️ Midjourney made the list without raising a dollar
🔒 But not everyone will survive — policy, trust, and data security are already major battlefields
The AI race isn’t just about model size — it’s about who trains faster, ships smarter, and earns trust first.Читать полностью…
📺 Top Talks from Y Combinator’s AI Startup School
In June, Y Combinator hosted a 2-day AI bootcamp for over 2,500 students and PhDs. They brought in top voices from OpenAI, Tesla, Microsoft, and more.
Here’s a handpicked list of the most valuable talks:
🔹Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain
Topic: Building Faster with AI
🔹 Andrej Karpathy, former Head of AI at Tesla & OpenAI co-founder
Topic: Software Is Changing (Again)
🔹 Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpaceX, xAI
Topic: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful
🔹 Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
Topic: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT’s Origins, and Building AI Hardware
🔹 Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Topic: Microsoft’s AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs
🔹 Fei-Fei Li, “Godmother of AI”
Topic: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI
🔹 François Chollet, creator of Keras & ARC Prize
Topic: How We Get to AGI
Coming soon: sessions from the founders of Perplexity, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind’s John Jumper.
🧠 How to convince investors the problem is real
A common founder line:
The problem is obvious — we’ve lived it ourselves.
In one week, we got X payments from Y customers.
We’re ready to buy, if the product meets these terms.
🧪Varda: Making drugs in space
What if the biggest breakthrough in pharma isn't on Earth?
Varda is betting that microgravity can unlock new ways to manufacture complex drugs — and they’re already proving it in orbit.
The startup has raised $329M and completed three missions, becoming the first private lab to operate outside the ISS.
Rethinking pharma through microgravity
🔸 Produces medicines in space to enable unique molecular structures
🔸 Successfully returns drugs to Earth via hypersonic capsules (Mach 25)
🔸 First private lab operating beyond the ISS
🔸 Opened a ground lab in California to prep and analyze payloads
🔸 Already working with major government clients like the Pentagon
🔸 Focused on next-gen monoclonal antibody therapeutics
If they can scale this, the economics will take care of themselves.
🛠 Cool tools for AI agents, coding, and automation
A fresh batch of tools for building smarter workflows, AI agents, content pipelines, and marketing hacks — all tested and useful.
Coding & marketing stack
🔸Firecrawl – scrape the web, make LLM.txt for GEO
🔸Exa – find the unfindable
🔸Hunter – lead enrichment
🔸DataforSEO – search demand & keyword intel
🔸Perplexity MCP – research API
🔸Manus – deep research
🔸Genspark – decks, agents, and pitch prep
🔸VAPI – voice agents (use Livekit if you’re a dev)
🔸Resend – programmatic emails (with new.email)
🔸Docker MCP – agent infra
🔸Supabase – friendly backend and auth
🔸Vercel – hosting
For browsing the web
🔸Browserbase – lets agents browse the web
🔸Playwright MCP – for testing and automation with web data
Automations
🔸Zapier – simple daily workflows
🔸n8n – self-hosted, flexible agent logic
🔸Lindy – best for field mapping automations
🔸Grumloop – browser-based triggers
🔸String.com – PipeDream-style text agent flows
🔸Manychat – IG short-form automation
Content generation
🔸Reel Farm – short-form repurposing
🔸Post Bridge – X-to-everything
🔸GenViral – idea prompts and hooks
🔸Banner Bear – dynamic image content
🔸Arcads – UGC-style AI ad builder
Design
🔸Aurachat – AI-powered design assistant
Building & prototyping
🔸Bolt, Replit, VO, Webflow, Framer – fast landing page tools
🔸Webflow CMS MCP – for programmatic blog creation
🔸Cursor – agentic IDE
🔸Warp – agentic terminal for builders
🔸Claude Code – best coding helper for non-devs
🧠 Most founders fail to prove product–market fit. This free 9-step template fixes that
Too many pitch decks jump straight to the product. No context, no clarity — just “here’s what we built.”
But if investors don’t understand who it’s for, what’s broken, and why now, they won’t care about your clever solution.
That’s where the PM-Fit Logic framework comes in. Created by startup mentor and researcher Jeroen Coelen, it’s been used by 300+ early-stage teams and VCs to tighten their story and surface real PMF signals.
Here’s how it works:
🔸 You start with the customer — one real segment, not a persona soup
🔸 Define their Job to Be Done — what they’re trying to achieve (not what you want)
🔸 Frame the real problem — the blocker stopping them from reaching that goal
🔸 Map the current alternatives — what they’re using today instead of you
🔸 Point out why those fall short — based on interviews, not assumptions
🔸 Explain the consequence of doing nothing — real stakes, not fluff
🔸 Only then do you pitch your product — framed as the natural solution
🔸 Link your features to the problems and gaps above — with clarity
🔸 Repeat this logic for each segment if needed — buyer ≠ user ≠ approver
You can use the framework in three ways:
🗄A pre-built Google Sheet (color-coded, structured)
🗄A custom GPT tool that scores your PMF logic (0–100)
🗄A whiteboard version for team workshops and accelerators
The end result: a logical, evidence-based story that shows why your product must exist — not just that it does.
No more vague pain points. No more investor confusion. Just clean, customer-first logic that actually holds up.
🌍 Nigeria wants to be the next India — but AI and visas say otherwise
Nigeria is training 3 million tech workers to become a global outsourcing hub.
But AI is eating entry-level jobs, and Western visa restrictions are blocking access to global markets.
🔸 Over 1.8M applied to the government’s free 3MTT tech program
🔸 Courses cover AI, cybersecurity, software dev — online + 200+ centers
🔸 Startups like AltSchool and Andela link Nigerian talent to global firms
🔸 AI now handles basic coding and customer support tasks once outsourced
🔸 U.S. immigration policies are forcing tech workers to stay home
🔸 Nigeria is building “Talent Cities” and training locals to build its own LLMs
The bet is big — but the game has changed.
🪙Send Bitcoin without internet — Jack Dorsey makes it real
Bitchat is a new peer-to-peer chat app that works entirely without internet or mobile signal.
🔸 Uses Bluetooth mesh to relay encrypted messages
🔸 No SIM card, no Wi-Fi, no servers, no login
🔸 Messages are ephemeral and fully private
🔸 Built for protests, outages, or remote areas
🔸 Currently in beta on iOS — Android coming soon
This isn’t a concept.
You can now send Bitcoin without internet.
🐥 Chickens-as-a-Service: the rise of subscription farming
From skyrocketing egg prices to eco-hype and backyard aesthetics — chickens are having a moment.
Rent the Chicken lets anyone try the farming life without commitment. For 4–6 months, you get mobile coops, laying hens, and fresh eggs — then return or adopt.
🔸 Partner network of 45 farmers across the US and Canada
🔸 Ready-to-go coops, no construction needed
🔸 Seasonal rentals with buyout option
🔸 Produces 8–14 eggs per week per package
🔸 $17.6M revenue (last public figure), growing ~20% yearly
🔸 48% sales spike during the pandemic
It’s a demo mode for aspiring homesteaders — and a gentle fix to pet abandonment.
❓ How to get blocked by a journalist: harmful tips for PR people
Dozens of pitches land in the inboxes of editors and reporters every day.
Only a few ever get a reply — either because they’re brilliant (rare) or disastrously bad (less rare).
Here’s a real-life example that set a new low. Want the same result? Follow these steps:
1️⃣Misspell the name of the publication — then double down by asking if the journalist still works there (despite being the editor-in-chief).
2️⃣Send your message word-by-word in separate texts. Offer five completely irrelevant experts without checking what the media actually writes about.
3️⃣Drop full bios, photos, and links for each speaker directly into Telegram.
4️⃣Add several large PDFs with no explanation of what’s inside.
5️⃣Wrap it all up by asking: “Do you need any comments? Or maybe a column?” No topic, no angle, no clarity.
If that pitch gets ignored or blocked, it’s not about arrogance — it’s a defense mechanism.
🧠 What it’s like to work at OpenAI — insights from a Codex engineer
Calvin French-Owen, ex-startup founder and one of the engineers behind Codex, spent a year at OpenAI before leaving.
He recently published a long reflection — here are the standout takeaways:
🔸 No one uses email internally — all comms go through Slack
🔸 Headcount grew from 1,000 to 3,000 in a year — processes constantly break
🔸 No strict product roadmap — priorities shift fast, sometimes no quarterly plan at all
🔸 Lots of bottom-up initiatives — small, semi-independent teams start research on their own
🔸 Flexible team structure — people can be moved between projects instantly if needed
🔸 High secrecy — Slack channels with access levels, can’t tell others what you work on
🔸 Many ex-Meta folks joined — not necessarily poached, just moved
🔸 Twitter is monitored constantly — post an idea and it might get picked up
🔸 No swag stockpile — merch drops are rare; first one crashed the Shopify store
🔸 Codex sprint was brutal — slept 5–6 hours, compared it to Y Combinator intensity
🔸 From first line of code to Codex launch: 7 weeks — says he’s never seen anything like it
OpenAI moves fast, breaks things, and keeps secrets. Not for everyone — but a dream for builders who like chaos.Читать полностью…
❔ A riddle for startup founders
Two companies. Same industry, similar product. Very different paths.
Company A:
Solo founder
🔸$10K MRR
🔸$500 on servers
🔸Max $2K on marketing
🔸~$7.5K monthly profit
Company B:
🗄2 founders + 1 investor
🗄$100K MRR
🗄$80K in monthly costs (infra + marketing + salaries)
🗄~$20K monthly profit
Now the question:
Who’s doing better?
Or more importantly — which setup would you choose?
📉 Small businesses risk falling behind in the AI revolution
New research shows that SMEs are falling far behind in AI adoption — and it could cost them productivity, talent, and growth.
🔸54% of small businesses use AI less than once a month
🔸38% say they’ve never used it
🔸 Only 24% feel their company invests meaningfully in AI
🔸Millennials are adopting 2–3x faster than Gen X or Boomers
🔸 Those who do use AI report better output, less stress, and even shorter workweeks
Big companies are already building automation pipelines.Читать полностью…
SMEs that don’t catch up soon could lose their edge entirely.
⚡️ Google killer? Comet browser by Perplexity and NVIDIA goes live
Google’s in trouble: NVIDIA and Perplexity launched Comet, the first AI-native browser — and early testers say it’s a game-changer.
🔺Comet Assistant works on any site: summaries, search help, problem-solving
🔺Perplexity is baked in — smarter, faster, and cleaner than Google
🔺Built-in AI agents book hotels, write emails, pay bills
🔺Manages tabs, bookmarks, and removes clutter by itself
🔺Comes preloaded with ad blockers and pop-up killers
Access is now open
🔥 Base44: The profitable AI startup built solo and sold for $80M
Base44 is an AI-powered app builder that turns plain-text prompts into fully functional web apps.
It was created and scaled by a solo founder — and recently acquired by Wix for $80M.
🔍What makes it stand out
🖱️Built and scaled by one person — no devs, no team
🖱️Reached 400K users without VC funding
🖱️Routes prompts across Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to maximize output
🖱️Daily product updates, viral loop built-in via social sharing
🖱️Grew via LinkedIn and direct feedback loops with early users
🖱️Generated profit early and kept full control before exit
📈 The exit and after
Wix paid $80M, with $25M set aside to retain the team post-acquisition. Base44 is now part of Wix Studio, continuing to operate independently.
Maor Shlomo may not have built the first solo unicorn — but he might’ve shown us exactly how it starts.Читать полностью…
⚡️ Meta takes 49% stake in Scale AI — the dataset factory behind Big Tech models
Founded in 2016, Scale AI builds the infrastructure that trains the trainers — cleaning, labeling, and structuring data for top AI systems.
It’s now 49% owned by Meta, which paid $14.3B and brought CEO Alexandr Wang into its elite AI group.
🖱️240,000+ contractors handle massive multi-modal data
🖱️Text, audio, 3D, and synthetic data for RLHF at scale
🖱️Quality via majority vote, dynamic calibration, and more
🖱️Upload raw — get back validated datasets via full-cycle API
🖱️Rapid-feedback pipelines using private foundation models
But trust issues surfaced fast: leaked docs revealed prompt sets, tasker emails, and internal client data — including Bard and xAI. Meta’s rivals (OpenAI, Google) are now freezing projects.
The big question: can Meta own the pipeline and still convince competitors to keep sending blood to its lab?
🤖 RealSense goes independent to power the rise of physical AI
RealSense, Intel’s former computer vision unit, has officially spun out and raised $50M to scale its vision systems for robotics, biometrics, and AI-driven automation.
The company continues shipping its signature depth cameras — already used in 60% of the world’s humanoid and mobile robots.
✅ Launched the new D555 depth camera with PoE and Vision SoC V5
✅ Partners include Unitree Robotics, ANYbotics, Fit:Match, and Eyesynth
✅ Backed by Intel Capital, MediaTek, and a leading semi PE firm
✅ Active across robotics, healthcare, access control, and automation
• Holds 80+ patents and serves 3,000+ customers worldwide
RealSense says it’s building for a future where robots don’t replace humans — they protect and empower them.
🧠 Grok 4 is here — and it might be the smartest AI ever built
The new model from xAI blows past Claude, GPT-4o, and Gemini 2.5 Pro.
It’s not just faster — it thinks better.