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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).
💡 Don’t fall in love with your MVP
Many founders get too attached to their first version. But an MVP is only a starting point, not the final product.
🔸 Early Airbnb had no payments or maps
🔸 Twitch began as a livestream of a founder’s daily life
🔸 Stripe launched as “devpayments,” just an API for developers
Your MVP is like homework from first grade, useful at the time, but not worth clinging to. The real journey is in what comes after.
🤖 Robot wins race… after knocking over a human
At the first-ever World Robot Games, a Unitree runner made headlines for more than just speed - it accidentally knocked a person down mid-race.
🔸 The robot still crossed the finish line first.
🔸 Distance: 1.5 km in 6 minutes 34 seconds.
🔸 Event: part of the competition’s endurance category.
Good thing there’s no robot biathlon yet - we’d rather keep the rifles away.
💼 Cohere hits $6.8B valuation with $500M raise
Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM developer, has closed a $500M round, boosting its valuation from $5.5B last year to $6.8B. The 2019-founded company focuses on corporate clients, not mass consumers.
🔸 Partnerships include Oracle, Dell, SAP, RBC, Fujitsu, and LG
🔸 New investor: Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan
🔸 Backers in the round: Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, AMD, Nvidia, Salesforce
🔸 New hires: ex-Meta research head Joelle Pineau, ex-Uber and Shield AI exec François Chadwick as CFO
🔸 Subtle jab at rivals: “Repackaged consumer models” can’t match AI built for enterprise security from the ground up
Cohere is doubling down on the corporate AI race.
🚀 The video that kept Perplexity’s CEO going
When asked what helped him push through the early days before any big wins, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas didn’t name a mentor or a business book. He said: “A video of Elon Musk.”
🔸 The clip shows a reporter pressing Musk about failed rocket launches - trying to get under his skin.
🔸 Musk’s answer: “I never give up.”
🔸 That moment became Aravind’s personal reset button whenever things got tough.
So, no heavy startup tips this Friday, just a shot of raw motivation.
Here’s the video that fires him up every time
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🎬 Turning sketches into cinematic videos
Higgsfield’s new AI tool works like real video Photoshop - upload any image, draw what should happen, and the AI turns it into a realistic movie clip.
🔸 Converts static images into dynamic, high-quality video
🔸 Works with major AI models like MiniMax, Veo 3, and more
🔸 Simple interface — no editing skills required
👉 Free to try via the link 👈
This could make video creation as easy as doodling on a picture.
🚀 NASA kicks off the race for a “Martian internet”
NASA will no longer build its own Mars data relays - instead, it plans to buy communications “as a service,” just like it does for astronaut transport.
The goal: a full system to move data from the Martian surface, through orbit, and back to Earth.
🔸 Current Mars data comes via aging orbiters like MRO and MAVEN
🔸 New commercial solutions are needed before these satellites fail
🔸 Blue Origin is developing an orbital relay based on Blue Ring (launch planned for 2028)
🔸 Rocket Lab and SpaceX are also in the race - SpaceX wants to adapt Starlink for Mars comms
If successful, this could create the backbone of a true interplanetary internet.
🚁 DJI aims beyond drones with premium home tech
DJI, the global drone leader, has entered the home electronics market with a $900 robot vacuum in China, blending cutting-edge navigation, strong data privacy, and built-in smart security features.
🔸 Precision navigation tech adapted from DJI’s drone expertise
🔸 Local data storage for higher privacy — no cloud mapping
🔸 Integrated smart camera for home and pet monitoring
🔸 Positioned as a security device as much as a vacuum
🔸 Price signals premium positioning, not “cheap but good”
DJI could become the first Chinese brand to escape the “good for the price” label.
Its reputation in drones already puts it in the global premium league - a “Chinese Apple” that can expand into any category without losing credibility.
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🥂 Frugalpac to scale world’s first paper wine bottle after £5M crowdfunding push
UK-based Frugalpac has developed the Frugal Bottle - 94% recycled paper, 84% lower carbon footprint than glass, and five times lighter. Already adopted by 50+ brands in 27 countries, it’s prevented over 1,400 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.
🔸 Over 3M bottles produced since launch, stocked by Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Target, Whole Foods, and 7-Eleven
🔸 £5M equity crowdfunding on Crowdcube follows £1M from existing and new investors, valuing the company at £25M pre-money
🔸 Plans to deploy 22 Frugal Bottle Assembly Machines worldwide by 2029, enabling 191M bottles annually
🔸 New product lines in development, including recyclable paper paint pots and takeaway cups
Frugalpac’s goal: replace a slice of the 33B glass wine and spirits bottles used globally each year with scalable, low-carbon paper alternatives.
💬 Google veteran raises $8M for AI group chat assistant
Former Google engineer David Petrou, known for his work on Google Goggles and Glass, has launched Continua - an AI agent designed to join group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord to help coordinate plans, manage tasks, and reduce chat clutter.
🔸 Seed round of $8M led by GV, with Bessemer Venture Partners and angels joining
🔸 AI can set reminders, run polls, create documents, and answer follow-up questions in DMs
🔸 Specially fine-tuned to handle multi-person conversations with “social intelligence”
🔸 Users can add Continua directly to group chats and control how often it participates
Petrou says the goal is to make LLMs a seamless part of everyday group coordination without overwhelming the conversation.
🧪 Chai Discovery secures $70M to revolutionize drug development with AI
Biotech startup Chai Discovery has raised $70M in Series A funding to advance its AI-driven drug discovery platform.
The round was led by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic, with backing from Yosemite, DST Global Partners, SV Angel, Avenir, DCVC, and existing investors like Thrive Capital, OpenAI, and Fred Ehrsam.
🔸 Founded in 2024 by veterans from Absci, Facebook AI, OpenAI, and Stripe, with former Pfizer R&D chief Mikael Dolsten on the board.
🔸 Flagship model Chai-2 designs antibodies de novo with up to 20% hit rates — compared to ~0.1% in traditional labs.
🔸 Works from target data alone, creating antibodies that bind precisely to their antigen.
🔸 Could drastically speed up and cut costs of developing treatments, including for rare diseases.
With this funding, Chai aims to expand its platform and deepen partnerships with pharma — pushing toward faster, more precise, and personalized medicine.
📝 OpenAI drops ultimate GPT-5 prompt guide
OpenAI has released a detailed guide for GPT-5, a developer-packed drop with ready-to-use prompts for better reasoning, no-code app creation guides, and even a meta-prompt to boost overall output quality.
👉 The full resource is here
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🤖 Altman responds to complaints over “rushed” GPT-5 launch
During a Reddit AMA, Sam Altman faced a flood of questions - from bugs in the new model to calls for bringing back GPT-4o.
The main gripe: GPT-5 felt “dumber” than its predecessor. Altman explained that on launch day, a new “router”, the system that chooses between a fast model and a deeper-thinking one, wasn’t working, hurting quality. The fix is now live.
🔸 Will make it clear which model answers each query
🔸 Plus user limits will be doubled
🔸 May bring GPT-4o back for Plus
🔸 Model-selection algorithm will be refined
One viral moment: during the launch, a chart showed a smaller value as a taller bar, instantly memed as a “chart crime.”
Altman called it a “mega-fail.”
📣 Sam Altman’s 2 rules for surviving as a founder
In a recent reflection, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared two lessons he wishes he’d learned earlier in his career — both are brutally simple, and extremely useful for any founder.
🔸 Ask for what you want — too many founders self-censor. They don’t pitch bold hires, ask for partnerships, or go after the deal. Fear of rejection kills opportunity before it’s born.
🔸 Crisis gets easier with time — the first few feel like the end of the world. By the 19th, you’ve built survival muscle. Every disaster teaches you that it’s possible to recover — and eventually, you stop panicking.
💡 The takeaway: confidence doesn’t come from being fearless. It comes from failing and surviving — again and again.
💊 Ex-Twitter CEO jumps into weight loss tech
Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X (Twitter), is now leading health-tech startup eMed Population Health — a company building an AI-powered platform for patients using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
🔸 eMed previously ran a COVID home-testing platform with step-by-step remote guidance
🔸 The company is now pivoting to the booming GLP-1 space: weight loss and Type 2 diabetes treatment
🔸 Yaccarino has no healthcare experience, but brings big-league media and partnership skills
🔸 Her hire signals eMed’s ambition to grab both market and investor attention
In the $100B+ GLP-1 race, eMed just added a headline-making operator to its arsenal.
🔍 Perplexity caught bypassing website indexing rules
Cloudflare has flagged Perplexity for evading site-level restrictions by using disguised crawlers. When blocked via robots.txt, it reportedly switches to a browser-masked bot to continue scraping content.
🔸 Perplexity now excluded from Cloudflare’s trusted bots list
🔸 Website owners can block it directly via Cloudflare settings
🔸 Cloudflare shared technical details of Perplexity’s cloaked crawler
The move raises fresh questions about AI data ethics — and how long these blocks will even work.
🤖 China unveils plan for pregnancy humanoid robot
Kaiwa Technology in Guangzhou is working on the world’s first humanoid robot with an artificial womb.
The machine is designed to carry a fetus through full gestation using artificial amniotic fluid and nutrient delivery, a prototype is expected by 2026, priced under $14K.
🔸 The concept was presented at the 2025 World Robot Conference in Beijing
🔸 Founder Zhang Qifeng says discussions with regulators in Guangdong are already underway
🔸 Artificial womb tech has been tested before - premature lambs were successfully grown in “biobags” in 2017
🔸 This leap aims to move from partial incubation toward full-term artificial gestation
🔸 The announcement has sparked both ethical concerns and interest as a potential solution for infertility
The project sits at the intersection of biotech and robotics, and raises a bigger question:
how far should we go in outsourcing the most human processes to machines?
💻 15 hottest coding topics for your next side project
A massive open-source library of coding project ideas is making the rounds - perfect for brushing up on skills and building a killer portfolio.
🔸 Covers everything from Python, Java, JS, Kotlin, R, HTML/CSS, C/C++ to advanced algorithms, data structures, VR, and graphics apps
🔸 Clearly structured by topic and difficulty so you can progress step-by-step
🔸 Includes creative picks like VR games you can build for headsets
👉 Dive in here 👈
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🍞 Google launches “AI model for your toaster”
Google has released Gemma 3 270M - a compact open-source AI model with 270M parameters that runs on smartphones, Raspberry Pi, and smart devices.
🔸 Works fully offline without internet access
🔸 Fine-tunes easily for specific tasks
🔸 Beats similar models in instruction-following tests
🔸Consumes just 0.75% of Pixel 9 Pro’s battery for 25 chats
👉 Download here 👈
Already used in apps like children’s story generators, it’s built for privacy, low power use, and cloud-free operation.
🧲 Vulcan Elements takes on China’s rare-earth magnet dominance
Vulcan Elements is building a high-energy magnet plant in North Carolina to supply EVs, energy, and industrial markets, aiming to localize a supply chain now 90% controlled by China.
🔸 Focus on NdFeB and SmCo magnets — compact, powerful, and essential for EV motors, wind turbines, robotics, electronics, and medtech.
🔸 Pilot line and R&D already operational; team reportedly just 18 people despite the high-tech nature of the work.
🔸 Recently raised $65M to scale production and secure stable supply for OEMs.
The big question - will US buyers pay a premium for local supply, or will price still outweigh independence?
🚨 Another founder exits xAI - launches AI safety fund
Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI and former DeepMind/OpenAI engineer, has left the company to start Babuschkin Ventures - an investment firm focused on AI safety research and startups.
🔸 Helped build xAI from scratch, creating core training tools and leading engineering across infrastructure, product, and applied AI
🔸 Part of the team that built the Memphis supercluster in 120 days, enabling rapid model training
🔸 Departure follows other recent executive exits from xAI and Musk-led companies
🔸 New fund will back projects making AI more secure, reliable, and aligned with human values
Babuschkin says the goal is not to race toward superintelligence at all costs, but to build the guardrails that ensure it benefits humanity.
🖼 Browser tool turns any pic into clean 4K
Lupa works entirely in your browser and can upscale anything - old photos, portraits, posters to 4K without distorting faces or adding artifacts. Even shots from a decade-old camera come out looking fresh.
🔸 No installs — runs directly in your browser
🔸 Preserves faces and details, no weird artifacts
🔸 Works on any image type, from landscapes to posters
🔸 Boosts resolution up to 4K without changing the original look
👉 Link 👈
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⭕️ OpenAI brings back all old ChatGPT models
OpenAI has restored all previous models, including GPT-4o, after quietly removing some earlier this year.
🔸 GPT-5 Thinking now offers 3,000 weekly messages for Plus subscribers
🔸 Extra quota added for GPT-5 Thinking mini
🔸 GPT-4.5 shelved due to high energy costs
Next stop - GPT-6
🎓 Free AI detector & text humanizer for students
A new tool helps students detect, rewrite, and humanize AI-generated content - perfect for bypassing plagiarism and AI detectors ahead of the new semester.
🔸 Detects AI-generated content in any document, image, or video
🔸 Shows which AI model was used and explains the detection process
🔸 Powerful text rewriting to pass detectors and add creativity
🔸 Choose rewriting via DeepSeek, GPT-4, or Claude
🔸 100% free to use
👉 Grab your study helper here
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🚀 Launch a startup in two clicks with Nas AI
Meet Nas - your personal founder, accountant, and SMM manager in one AI tool.
🔸 Finds a strong startup idea and builds a strategy to reach profitability.
🔸 Helps launch ad campaigns online.
🔸 Sets up email marketing and tracks your income and expenses.
🔸 Completely free to use.
👉 Try it here 👈
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📚 15,000+ free courses in one place
CourseCorrect has launched a massive library of over 15,000 full courses. From IT and science to music, languages, and soft skills, you can learn almost anything for free.
👉 Check it out 👈
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🧪 The AI "vaccine" against bad behavior
Anthropic has been experimenting with a curious safety trick — giving its AI a small, controlled “dose of evil” during training so it learns to recognize and avoid it later.
🔸 Researchers pick a negative trait (like aggression or manipulativeness)
🔸 They find its neural “signature” by tracking which neurons activate when the model shows it
🔸 They tweak this signature to see how the model’s behavior changes
🔸 During training, they filter out overly “toxic” data — but also inject a bit of the trait under supervision, so the AI learns to detect and block it
The idea is similar to a vaccine: expose the system to the problem in small amounts, so it builds resistance.
In theory, this could help AI spot and shut down its own toxic, manipulative, or overly flattering responses — without waiting for humans to catch them.
⚡️Q.ANT bets on light-based chips for the AI era
Q.ANT just raised €62M in Europe’s biggest photonic computing round, aiming to replace traditional silicon chips with light-powered processors.
🔸 Their photonic chips perform operations like multiplication using a single optical element
🔸 Built on thin-film lithium niobate, they offer up to 30x higher energy efficiency
🔸 Q.ANT servers work out of the box — no water cooling, no special setup
🔸 Already used by early adopters and support Python, C++, standard stacks
🔸 Spun out of TRUMPF and led by Max Planck physicist Michael Förtsch
While others are stuck in R&D, Q.ANT is shipping now and aiming to put photonic co-processors next to GPUs in every major data center by 2030.
🐺 China’s new battlefield beasts: robo-wolves, not robot dogs
China has officially unveiled a new class of robotic fighters — not cute quadrupeds, but 70-kg robo-wolves armed with rifles and grenade launchers.
🔸 Deployed in recent military drills, these robo-wolves fought alongside human troops on the front line
🔸 Controlled via FPV drone data, some were equipped for recon, others for direct combat
🔸 Commanders say the packs complete tasks efficiently and intimidate enemy soldiers
Robotic warfare is shifting fast — and psychological edge might matter just as much as firepower.
🚀 Top 10 accelerators for early-stage startups
If you're building a startup and looking for the best launchpad, here are the most respected accelerators globally — ranked by quality of alumni, access to investors, and overall reputation:
🔸 Y Combinator – The gold standard. $500K early checks, global brand. Alumni: Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox.
🔸 Techstars – Huge network in the US and Europe. 4,100+ portfolio companies, $30B+ raised.
🔸 500 Global – Focused on emerging markets (LATAM, Asia). 2,600+ startups across 5 continents.
🔸 StartX – For Stanford founders. No equity required. Deep Valley ties and elite network.
🔸 Antler – Global program that starts at idea stage. Strong founder matching across 30+ locations.
🔸 StartupBootcamp – Fast launch tracks with corporate partners in Europe, Asia, Africa.
🔸 Alchemist Accelerator – B2B-only, deep expertise in enterprise and infrastructure.
🔸 Plug and Play Tech Center – Corporate partnerships, global reach, rich industry tracks.
🔸 Berkeley SkyDeck – UC Berkeley-backed, strong in deeptech and university-linked startups.
🔸 NFX Fast Track – Pre-seed/seed program with elite mentorship and fast-track access to NFX Signal.
Before applying, compare terms, graduate traction, and geo fit. The right accelerator can change your whole trajectory.
✍️ 4 lessons from Microsoft Copilot's AI mess
Despite leading in enterprise software, Microsoft’s Copilot rollout shows what not to do in AI product design. Broken context, poor UX, and generic tooling are symptoms of deeper design failures — and they’re avoidable.
Here are four hard-earned lessons:
🔸 Meet users where they are
Copilot assumes one-size-fits-all. Power users get frustrated, novices get lost. Its Teams integration works because it automates boring tasks within familiar workflows. But Word, Excel, and Outlook? Slow, confusing, inconsistent.
🔸 Context is everything
Copilot fails to account for app versions, user settings, or data environments. Great AI tools like Cursor thrive because they start narrow, respect user context, and expand carefully. Copilot ignores that, and it shows.
🔸 Design for failure
AI will mess up — the question is how gracefully. Copilot offers no useful feedback loops. Unlike Replit, which previews agent output early, Copilot delivers errors late and opaque. No trust, no iteration.
🔸 Avoid overreach
Microsoft tried to bolt “AI” onto everything without clarity or purpose. Copilot often tells users how to do things, rather than just doing them. A good AI product solves one real task completely — not 10 vaguely.
The irony? Microsoft owns GitHub Copilot — a well-scoped product loved by devs. But its enterprise AI tools feel more like a press release than a real solution.