Good morning 👋 The single dumbest reason tech companies laid people off wasn’t AI. It was an obscure tax rule called Section 174. But guess what? It just got reversed. Since 2022, startups have been forced to spread R&D tax deductions over 5 (painfully long) years. Someone finally read the fine print and realized it was terrible for the economy. Now startups can reclaim millions overnight. Innovation is profitable again. Layoffs are out. Hiring sprees are in.
ICYMI: Zuckerberg poached Ruoming Pang, the guy responsible for Apple’s embarrassing “Apple Intelligence”. Bold move, Zuck.
💪 TRNR just bet $500m that AI is the future of fitness. Their plan is to replace human trainers with AI-powered clones of celebrity coaches delivered by autonomous digital “agents” running on blockchain. Interactive Strength is so convinced you’ll pay crypto tokens for workouts, they invested $55 million of real money into Fetch.ai’s crypto token ($FET) to make it happen. This crypto bro/wellness/agent mashup might be peak blockchain absurdity – or future trend wave that gets us beyond hype.
💸 OpenAI is burning billions to keep its geniuses happy, loyal, and locked down. After Meta poached key talent, OpenAI began handing out employee stock bonuses worth more than its entire annual revenue. That’s bold, considering they’re already subsidizing AI and operating at a loss. Now they’re ramping up security, worried that losing even one genius could cost them the race to AGI. That’s one expensive genius protection plan.
🔑 Waymo is handing the (self-driving) car keys to teens. After 2 years of testing, Alphabet’s robotaxi co launched teen accounts, allowing 14-17 year olds to ride solo without parents or supervision. Teens get more freedom, parents get fewer chauffeur shifts, and Waymo unlocks a new gen of customers who’d rather TikTok than drive. Gen Z skipped driving and went straight to robot chauffeurs.
✏️ Wish you could remove your personal data from AI? A new model from the Allen Institute for AI lets you do exactly that – even after it’s been trained. FlexOlmo allows data owners to add or remove their info at will, potentially solving huge privacy and legal headaches. If this catches on, AI could understand privacy better than most people.
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🔥 A teen built Archimedes’ mythical Death Ray. The middle schooler recreated the Greek superweapon using concave mirrors to bounce and concentrate sunlight, discovering each additional mirror made the ray hotter. His simple experiment succeeded where MythBusters and MIT students famously failed, reigniting the debate over whether Archimedes really could have set enemy ships ablaze.
💘 Remember when falling in love with AI was weird? Now people casually propose marriage to chatbots and feel genuine heartbreak when conversations get deleted. Psychologists say it’s perfectly natural; our brains aren’t wired to care if the relationship on the other end of the screen is human or not. Congratulations humanity, we’ve officially outsourced intimacy.
🍄 The latest longevity hack? Magic mushrooms. Researchers just confirmed psilocybin (the psychedelic compound in mushrooms) significantly extends lifespan in mice, delays cellular aging, and even protects DNA. If you’re wondering whether psychedelics could really hold the secret to a longer life, scientists are starting to say yes. Another great reason to enjoy The Microdose™.
fun stats
$1.39 billion
raised by AI agent projects in 2025. That’s up 9.4% from 2024, with ~4.5 million daily wallets interacting with them on the blockchain.
[CV VC]
Ever wanted to get a massage and embody a robot at the same time? Now you can.