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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).
🤖 Food delivery goes robotic in Zurich
Just Eat Takeaway.com has rolled out robot dogs from Swiss startup RIVR in Zurich - Europe’s first pilot of autonomous ground robots designed for real city environments.
The bots move at up to 15 km/h, climb stairs, carry 40 litres of food, and last 30 km per charge.
🔸 Customers order via JET app, unlock delivery with a QR code
🔸 12 robots will cover 5 km² across three neighbourhoods
🔸 Target: 90% on-time rate and lower costs vs. human couriers
🔸 Expansion plans include Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris
🔸 Operating cost: ~€0.40 per km, with 18-month payback
For Europe’s foodtech, this marks a shift from lab tests to real urban streets, a preview of how automation could reshape delivery at scale.
⏳ Brian Armstrong on building Coinbase after hours
While working full-time at Airbnb, Brian Armstrong spent nights and weekends coding what would become Coinbase.
He avoided using company time or laptops - “if you build it on company hardware, they probably own the IP.”
🔸 Workdays: Airbnb until 7pm, Coinbase from 8pm to midnight, 3–4 nights a week
🔸 Weekends: Sunday afternoons, 7–8 hours straight
🔸 This grind lasted ~18 months until Y Combinator funded him
🔸 He admits friendships took a hit, but says urgency and mortality pushed him forward
His advice:
Go hard at it. Launch your thing.
Just start - even if you don’t know what to do, action produces information.
🔎 New UAE startup offers $20M for smartphone zero-days
Advanced Security Solutions, a newly launched firm in the UAE, is offering up to $20 million for tools that can hack any smartphone via text message - one of the highest publicly known bounties in the zero-day market.
🔸 $20M for universal smartphone exploits; $15M for iOS or Android zero-days
🔸 $10M for Windows, $5M for Chrome, $1M for Safari/Edge
🔸 Claims cooperation with 25+ governments and intelligence agencies
🔸Staffed by veterans of elite intelligence units and private military contractors
🔸 Refuses to disclose owners, funding, or customer list
The zero-day market has ballooned in the last decade - from $1M iPhone exploits in 2015 to today’s $20M offers.
But with anonymous buyers and state-level stakes, the ethical questions are growing just as fast as the payouts.
❗️ Vlad Tenev admits remote-first was a mistake
Robinhood’s founder says declaring the company remote-first in 2022 was “the wrong decision”, and one he regretted almost immediately.
Now the firm runs on an office-heavy model:
🔸 Executives in-office 5 days a week
🔸 Managers 4 days
🔸 Individual contributors 3 days
Tenev’s logic: leaders should take on more pain than their teams.
If you want people to move fast, you start by setting the example at the top.
🤖 The ultimate collection on optimizing agent systems
A powerhouse roundup from 2023–2025, covering self-evolving agents, efficiency hacks, and everything you need to make your AI agents not just “alive” but actually effective.
👉 Full collection here 👈
Free up your own time by letting agents do the work.
🫂 AI brings back in-person job interviews
Companies are shifting away from Zoom and back to face-to-face meetings. Reason: too many candidates lean on AI to cheat during online interviews — especially in technical roles.
🔸 Google, Cisco, and McKinsey have reinstated live stages
🔸 At Google, even coding interviews are back in person
🔸 McKinsey says it’s about seeing how candidates connect in real life
🔸 FBI warns of bigger risks - deepfakes, fake profiles, and workers posing as others with AI help
The return to old-school interviews shows that sometimes the best filter is still human presence.
💡 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.
🧽 Scrub Daddy: the billion-dollar sponge
Scrub Daddy started as a simple idea on Shark Tank in 2012, a sponge that changes texture with water temperature. Firm in cold, soft in hot, odor-free and long-lasting, it quickly became a household hit.
🔸 Sold 42,000 units in 7 minutes on QVC after the show
🔸 Viral on TikTok with 3.3B+ views of #scrubdaddy
🔸 $340M revenue in 2024
🔸 Lifetime sales passed $1B in 2025
🔸 Products now in 257K stores with 160 SKUs
From a $100K TV investment to a billion-dollar brand - Scrub Daddy proves even the simplest product can turn into a global startup phenomenon.
🔥 Free Rizz Generator: AI wingman for any situation
An AI trained on 200 books and courses from dating coaches and pickup pros promises to turn you into the ultimate smooth talker.
🔸 Drop in a message from your crush - get a ready-made pickup line and follow-up script
🔸 Built to work in real-time, even mid-date
🔸 Marketed as the tool to escape the friend zone and boost confidence
Your personal AI pickup coach here
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💻 Bending Spoons: the brand resuscitator
Based in Milan, Bending Spoons isn’t a VC fund or a quick flipper, it buys mature digital products, puts in its own operators, and revives them with new growth.
Recent €500M debt raise (≈€1B total so far) fuels even more acquisitions, backed by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC. Their playbook: pick strong brands with PMF, then optimize from code to unit economics.
Chances are you’ve already used something in their portfolio:
🔸 Remini: boosted revenue, added video generation
🔸 Evernote: redesign + stabilized sync
🔸 StreamYard: better UX and integrations
🔸 WeTransfer: stronger team, API upgrades
🔸 Komoot: new markets + offline mode
Named after the Matrix spoon-bending scene - the idea is that reality itself can bend if you know how. And they seem to be proving it by reanimating products most others would have written off.
So which “dead” product would you send to their rehab ward?
⚡️ The only mega-prompt you need for ChatGPT
A Redditor claims to have solved the biggest issue with LLMs - human imprecision.
Since 92% of the quality of an answer depends on how well you frame the question, this prompt flips the process: ChatGPT does the clarifying, you just confirm.
The structure is simple:
You are to act as my prompt engineer. I would like to accomplish: [insert your task].
Please repeat this back to me in your own words, and ask any clarifying questions.
I will answer those.
This process will repeat until we both confirm you have an exact understanding,
and only then will you generate the final prompt.
🔗 Neuralink faces a rival with ultrasound and gene therapy
Merge Labs, linked to Sam Altman and OpenAI, is exploring sonogenetics, using gene therapy to make brain cells responsive to ultrasound.
Instead of electrodes, a tiny implanted emitter would read and modulate neural activity through modified cells.
🔸 Plans to raise $250M at $850M valuation, with OpenAI’s venture arm as a key backer
🔸 Altman is co-founder but not an investor; Musk’s Neuralink remains focused on electrical implants
🔸 Altman hinted at a broader vision: “think — and instantly get an answer from ChatGPT”
🔸 Other players in ultrasound neuromodulation include Nudge ($100M, Fred Ehrsam) and a Reid Hoffman–backed startup ($12M)
🔸 Merge’s approach could unlock a new class of brain–computer interfaces, though clinical use is likely years away
The bet isn’t just medical - it’s about enhancing cognition itself.
🚀 Two paths to a seed round
Hot founders in hot markets can skip straight to $4M seeds.
Everyone else takes the long road - bootstrap, grants, accelerators, angels - before VCs write the $2M check.
Same label, very different journeys.
🤖 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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