Happy Friday! 👋 Remember when the toughest parenting decision was figuring out if kids could watch cartoons unsupervised? Now toddlers chat with AI unicorns, and you’re wondering if imaginary friends were better off imaginary. Parents love AI toys that spin personalized stories, but scientists aren’t convinced. Young kids often can’t tell if their digital buddy is alive, fake, or something in between. We’re diving headfirst into an experiment nobody fully understands yet.
💰 Publishers with OpenAI licensing deals get 7x more traffic. ChatGPT now showcases select publishers in special feature boxes, driving massive visibility and clicks. But there’s a catch. OpenAI quietly handpicked just 40 large publishers for these exclusive deals, leaving indie media out in the cold. Unlike algorithms, these secret deals openly decide who gets seen and who doesn’t. So much for the open web.
🍪 Microsoft and OpenAI are racing to build their own AI chips. Demand for AI hardware has exploded so fast even Nvidia can’t keep up. Microsoft says owning the entire stack from chips to data centers is critical, and it’s spending billions to make it happen. Meanwhile, Sam Altman secretly flew to Taiwan this week to sip bubble tea with TSMC and Foxconn and chat about world domination. Because in AI, whoever owns the chips has the power.
🏅a16z knows which AI startups actually make money. They ranked the top 50 tools startups are throwing serious cash at, including productivity copilots, vibe-coding apps, and consumer hits like CapCut, Midjourney, and Canva. Even note-takers and sales tools are quietly crushing it, proving AI hype is translating into real dollars. With no single app dominating yet, there’s still plenty of room to build the next breakout. Consider this your cheat sheet for chasing smart money.
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🦠 Well, this is scary. The company that gave us the BSOD and Clippy just used AI to discover a biological “zero day.” Labs normally rely on safety checks to flag dangerous toxins before anyone can create them. But Microsoft’s AI found a way to trick those systems completely. They didn’t actually produce anything harmful, but their experiment exposed a security gap nobody even knew existed. Apparently keeping viruses off your PC was just the warmup.
⚛️ Now anyone can train robots like DeepMind and Disney. Meet Newton, an open-source physics engine that lets robots quickly learn complex skills in ultra-realistic virtual worlds. Instead of spending months stumbling through real-world trial and error, robots now master tasks in just days. Newton is backed by heavy-hitters from NVIDIA, DeepMind, Disney Research, and the Linux Foundation, giving startups and basement hackers robot-training powers once reserved for billion-dollar labs. Perfect if your garage is ready for a simulated robot uprising.
fun stats
OpenAI is now the most valuable private company in the world 🏆 Valued at $500 billion, it beat out SpaceX for the top spot.
The ‘everything everywhere all at once’ AI/social/chips/robotics/infrastructure/ad platform:
Brought in ~$4.3B in revenue in the first half of 2025… with a burn of $7.8B in operating losses.
CFO says they’ll bring in $13B revenue this year.
Is also the #1 app startups spend money on, according to a16z
🚽 Skibidi Sam: Altman is literally everywhere as Sora 2 takes over social media with viral fake AI videos. Let the billions in ad revenue flow.
👏 Yesterday we put a call out for a Sora code, and you delivered! A big shoutout to Peter Kirwin for sharing first.