This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis covers startups, technology, markets, media, and business, and interviews founders, operators, investors, and innovators.
Hugging Face Bets on Cheap Robots to Build Physical AI
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf argues that Microduck, a sub-$400 open-source robot, is meant to bring more builders into physical AI—not by solving household work, but by giving users a capable machine on which to train and share behaviors. In this interview, Wolf places that bet alongside Hugging Face’s larger model: free public distribution supported by paid storage and compute infrastructure, with open models providing organizations an alternative when proprietary systems are unavailable, restricted or unsuitable. He also says that openness must be paired with stronger AI-driven cyber defense after the company’s own breach.
Founder Vesting Protects Startups When Co-Founders Leave
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that startup equity should remain tied to ongoing contribution: founder vesting lets a company recover unearned shares when a co-founder leaves, while advisor grants need objective milestones or active termination when the work stops. She says founders negotiating financing gain their strongest leverage from multiple term sheets, which allow them to weigh vesting, board representation and follow-on capacity alongside valuation.
Insulin Testing Could Reveal Metabolic Risk Before Blood Sugar Rises
Dr Mark Hyman argues that US healthcare is built to treat diagnosed disease rather than identify the metabolic and nutritional problems that precede it. Through Function Health, Hyman is making the case for patient-held, longitudinal records that combine laboratory tests, imaging, wearables and medical history, with AI used to organize the data under clinician supervision. He says routinely overlooked measures such as insulin and ApoB can reveal risk hidden by normal blood-sugar readings, while warning that wider testing and GLP-1 use require careful interpretation, follow-up and muscle-preserving care.
Clean IP Title Determines Whether a Spinout Can Raise
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that a spinout must give the parent a defensible return without leaving the new company’s founders too little ownership to recruit, raise capital, and build an independent business. Alongside the cap table, she says, the parties must establish a clean chain of title to the IP and document continuing rights around infrastructure, employees, customers, and confidential information before the team begins operating separately.
Preferred Stockholders Control Their Designated Board Seats
Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw argues that startup founders should treat board seats as durable allocations of corporate control, not as informal advisory roles they can revoke when a relationship sours. Boards approve consequential actions from financings and equity grants to CEO changes, and preferred-stock investors commonly gain designated seats whose holders are elected by their own class of stock. Once those rights are set in the charter and financing documents, common stockholders generally cannot remove the investor’s director without that investor’s agreement.
China Uses Robot Sports to Normalize Humanoids Before Mass Deployment
Jason Calacanis argues that China’s World Humanoid Robot Games are not simply a technical showcase but a campaign to make people cheer for machines before those machines enter workplaces and daily life. On This Week in Startups, he contrasts Beijing’s use of sport and spectacle with what he sees as a more anxious American debate about AI displacement, while Lon Harris says the games’ anthropomorphic framing is plainly intended to make humanoids seem familiar and relatable.
AI Game Creation Shifts From Coding to Taste and Iteration
Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian argues that generative AI can lower the cost of making interactive experiences, but cannot replace the human judgment required to make a game worth playing. His company pairs natural-language generation with an editor for tuning mechanics, pacing and other precise choices, on the premise that “taste is the new programming language.” As more people publish AI-made games and other interactive content, Sadeghian says discovery and recommendation will determine whether creators can find an audience.
Meta Offers AI Access in Exchange for Data Center Support
Jason Calacanis argues that Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto is a political bargain: Meta promises broadly available tutors, agents and business tools in exchange for public acceptance of the data centers needed to run them. He sees open-weight models and AI embedded in Meta’s existing apps as both a competitive strategy and a way to argue that AI’s gains will not be confined to a few companies. Lon Harris is more skeptical, describing the essay as a polished case for Meta’s expanding product footprint as much as for distributed access to intelligence.
Lower Qubit Requirements Narrow Quantum Computing’s Path to Utility
Yaqumo CEO Kazuhiro Nakashoji argues that quantum computing’s long-delayed commercial timeline is narrowing because hardware capabilities are rising as the number of qubits needed for useful work falls. He says progress in algorithms, error correction and neutral-atom hardware could bring those curves together around 2030, though quantum processors would serve as specialized accelerators alongside conventional systems rather than replace them. Yaqumo’s bet is that integrating the lasers, vacuum equipment and software behind those machines can turn laboratory research into deployable infrastructure.
Stripe’s PayPal Bet Would Trade Focus for Scale
A reported preliminary Stripe evaluation of a bid for PayPal has prompted Jason Calacanis to imagine a merger that combines PayPal’s distribution and cash flow with Stripe’s infrastructure, then cuts deeply into PayPal’s cost base. Alex Wilhelm argues that the same transaction could saddle the faster-growing company with legacy systems and an unwieldy workforce, undermining the focus that made Stripe valuable. Their dispute turns less on whether a share swap or leveraged deal can be structured than on whether PayPal’s reach can be separated from the machinery required to sustain it.
8090 Targets the $4 Trillion Services Layer in Enterprise Software
Chamath Palihapitiya argues that AI’s most important near-term business use is not casual prompt-based coding, but a governed way for enterprises to build and maintain custom software with the discipline of large technology companies. In a This Week in Startups interview, he presents 8090 and its Software Factory product as an attempt to attack the services layer of enterprise software spending by turning business intent into auditable requirements, plans, code, and updates. The same concern with agency runs through his broader claim: AI may make more things abundant, but people and companies still need risk, control, and “adventure” to develop.
Board Bets Tabletop Touchscreens Can Make Video Games Social Again
Brynn Putnam, founder and CEO of Board, argues that video games can become more social by moving the screen from individual devices to a shared tabletop. In a This Week in Startups interview, she describes Board as a $399 “face-to-face gaming console” that uses a 24-inch touchscreen and physical pieces to combine the interactivity of video games with the accessibility of family board games. The broader case is that category-creating hardware has to make the experience legible before the market is obvious.
GRU Space Plans Lunar-Regolith Bricks as the First Step Toward a Moon Hotel
On This Week in Startups, GRU Space founder Skyler Chan argues that a Moon hotel is the first commercial wedge for a larger off-Earth manufacturing business: using lunar regolith to make construction materials rather than shipping them from Earth. Chan lays out a plan to prove the technology by making a brick on the Moon, then scale toward robotic habitats, NASA construction work, space tourism and eventual claims on lunar resources. The same episode turns to Anthropic’s forced shutdown of Fable 5 and Mythos 5, which Jason Calacanis and Lon Harris frame as a warning that frontier capabilities can be cut off before law, politics and operating norms have settled.
GRU Space’s Moon Hotel Depends on Turning Lunar Dirt Into Infrastructure
Skyler Chan of GRU Space argues that the company’s proposed lunar hotel is less a tourism stunt than a test case for building infrastructure from the moon itself. In an interview with Jason Calacanis and Lon Harris, Chan said GRU’s core bet is that concentrated sunlight can melt lunar regolith into durable building material, reducing the need to haul construction supplies from Earth; the episode also used a contested rumor about Anthropic to examine how closely frontier AI labs are becoming tied to U.S. national-security institutions.
SpaceX’s IPO Forces Public Markets to Price a Venture-Scale Future
Jason Calacanis used SpaceX’s reported IPO to argue that public markets will misread the company if they treat it only as a near-term earnings story. On This Week in Startups, he framed SpaceX as part operating business and part venture bet: Starlink and launch can be measured today, while direct-to-phone service, orbital data centers, Moon bases and Mars remain longer-horizon wagers on Elon Musk’s execution. The episode then turned to Polsia founder Ben Cera, whose AI-run fundraising stunt was presented as a case study in attention that demonstrates the product rather than merely promoting it.
Brilliant’s Koji Uses AI to Make Students Solve Problems Themselves
Brilliant founder Sue Khim tells This Week in Startups that the company’s new AI tutor, Koji, is built to counter the education use case parents fear most: software that gives students answers while eroding their ability to think. Khim argues the opportunity is not generic AI in the classroom, but a constrained tutor embedded in Brilliant’s lessons that uses Socratic prompting, visual scaffolding, and assessment to help students solve problems themselves. Jason Calacanis frames the same idea more broadly, saying AI is useful when it strengthens the person doing the work rather than replacing the work.
Sanders’ 50% AI Stock Plan Turns Training Data Into a Political Fight
Jason Calacanis argued that Anthropic’s call for an AI slowdown and Bernie Sanders’ proposal for public ownership of major AI companies show AI politics moving toward jobs, ownership and redistribution. He dismissed Sanders’ 50% stock-tax plan as unworkable but said its premise could resonate with voters who believe AI companies built enormous value from public and creative inputs while threatening employment. Yoland Yan’s ComfyUI demo supplied the production-layer version of the same control question, presenting generative AI as a workflow where exposed parameters and reproducibility matter more than prompt-box convenience.
ComfyUI Bets on Open-Source Control for AI Video Workflows
Despite its Anthropic-titled hook, the source’s developed argument is about product interfaces that give users more control over complex systems. ComfyUI co-founder Yoland Yan argues that serious AI video creators need open, node-based workflows rather than simplified freemium tools; INTVL founder Louis Phillips makes the case for turning tracked routes into contested fitness territory; and the fact-checker bounty highlights live verification as a control layer for streamed claims.
Startups Build the Missing Logistics Layers for Orbit and Construction Sites
Impulse Space and Dusty Robotics are making the same kind of bet in very different markets: that valuable infrastructure sits in the handoff after the headline platform has done its job. Tom Mueller argues Impulse is building the logistics layer after launch, with Mira serving government demand for orbital mobility and Helios aimed at faster, cheaper moves from low Earth orbit to GEO, while lunar and Mars payload gains sit inside his broader case for in-space transport. Tessa Lau argues Dusty is doing the analogous work in construction, turning digital plans into precise floor-printed instructions for trades, data center builders and eventually other job-site robots.
Frontier Hardware Startups Face Infrastructure Constraints Beyond the Demo
Cortical Labs and Pyka show how frontier hardware companies move from demonstration to deployable infrastructure. On This Week in Startups, Cortical founder Hon Weng Chong presents the CL1 as a programmable biological computer that packages lab-grown neurons, silicon hardware, life support and cloud tools, and says unpublished work shows neurons can be 5,000 times more sample-efficient than GPU-based reinforcement learning systems. Pyka chief executive Michael Norcia argues that autonomous aircraft face a different bottleneck: not whether they can fly, but whether regulation, uptime, maintenance and field deployment allow them to improve in real use.
Seed Founders Need 150 Qualified Investor Targets in 2026
Jason Calacanis uses a This Week in Startups “Ask Jason” segment to argue that raising a seed round in 2026 requires founders to treat fundraising as a qualified sales process, not a test of investor warmth. His benchmark is a large, researched funnel — about 150 seed funds contacted, 50 first meetings, 15 to 20 second meetings, and two term sheets — backed by more product and customer proof than early-stage companies once needed. He also argues that AI startups must build around workflow and distribution rather than generic model output, while hardware has become harder but more investable when it creates real lock-in.
Manna Bets Low-Cost Airline Economics Will Win Drone Delivery
Manna founder Bobby Healy tells This Week in Startups that drone delivery is becoming a low-cost operations business, not a novelty market, and argues his Dublin-based company can win by applying airline-style discipline to delivery networks. Healy says Manna’s 300,000 completed deliveries, claimed 97% Irish-weather availability and new $50 million Series B position it to expand in the U.S. as regulation opens up. Theseus co-founder Ian Laffey adds a defense-side version of the same argument from Kyiv: drone scale depends less on exotic aircraft than on cheap, reliable systems that can keep working when GPS and supply chains fail.
Software-Defined Factories Are Moving From Hypercars to Cruise Missiles
Lukas Czinger, chief executive of Divergent Technologies, argues on This Week in Startups that U.S. defense manufacturing can move faster and at lower cost if factories are treated as software-defined infrastructure rather than product-specific plants. The article also follows Brandon Goode and Mark Horowitz’s case for Outro Health: that antidepressant prescribing has scaled without an equally developed system for helping patients stop safely. Across the defense, healthcare and AI segments, the source frames the central problem as incentives — what existing systems pay companies to build, maintain or automate, and what they leave underbuilt.
Divergent Says Software-Defined Factories Can Build Drones in 71 Days
Lukas Czinger, co-founder of Divergent Technologies, argues that the bottleneck in defense hardware is not design but the tooling and fixed production lines that make iteration slow once a product leaves prototype. In a livestream interview, he said Divergent’s software-defined factory can move autonomous aircraft and other complex systems from digital design into production without rebuilding the supply chain around each change, citing a 71-day clean-sheet build of a flyable small uncrewed aircraft as proof of the model.
Kled Founder Alleges Luel Copied Its Human Data Marketplace
This Week in Startups put two founder arguments side by side: Mercury chief executive Immad Akhund said the fintech’s new $200mn round is meant to create strategic flexibility for a profitable company seeking a bank charter, while Kled founder Avi Patel argued that an alleged copycat in the human-data marketplace category threatens trust in a business built on consent and compliance. Jason Calacanis treated Patel’s dispute with Luel, Y Combinator and General Catalyst less as an intellectual-property case than as an ethics and diligence signal for investors.
Seed Investors Now Expect Product Velocity, Not Just a Pitch Deck
Jason Calacanis argues that early-stage founders now need customer evidence before they can credibly raise or scale. In a live response to founder questions, he says the 2024 seed bar has moved from a strong deck to real product velocity — including, for SaaS companies, roughly $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue — and that founders should keep sales founder-led until about $1 million in ARR rather than hiring a VP of Sales to learn the market for them.
Mercury’s OCC Charter Moves It From Fintech Toward Direct Banking
Mercury CEO Immad Akhund argues the company’s OCC charter approval moves it from a fintech dependent on partner banks toward a bank that can hold deposits and build lending products directly. His case is not just that Mercury has won new authority, but that startup banking requires a different risk model: venture-backed customers can move cash in and out together with the funding cycle. Kled founder Avi Patel separately describes his company’s data marketplace and says a competitor copied its frontend so directly that Kled’s API keys remained in the source code.
AI Backlash Reaches Commencement as Graduates Face a Reshaped Job Market
Jason Calacanis and Alex Wilhelm argue that the boos greeting pro-AI commencement speeches are a visible sign of AI’s legitimacy problem with new graduates entering the workforce. On This Week in Startups, they frame the reaction less as technophobia than as distrust: students have already seen AI weaken academic norms, threaten entry-level work, concentrate wealth around frontier labs, and expand systems of surveillance and data capture. Their discussion returns to a central question: whether workers, founders, consumers, and citizens have any meaningful control over the AI systems now reshaping their choices.
Self-Driving Startups Shift From Science Risk to OEM Deployment
Wayve chief executive Alex Kendall and Waabi chief executive Raquel Urtasun argue that self-driving has moved from a basic research problem to an execution problem built around end-to-end AI, world models, OEM partnerships and deployment economics. In this This Week in Startups discussion, Kendall makes the case for licensing Wayve’s “intelligence layer” across consumer vehicles and robotaxis, while Urtasun says Waabi’s L4-native Driver-as-a-Service model can scale first through trucking and then robotaxis. Both reject the idea that autonomy is simply solved, but they present the remaining challenge as integration, validation, regulation and commercialization rather than a missing scientific breakthrough.
AI Is Forcing Startups to Return Capital or Rebuild Around Agents
AI is forcing founders and investors to make decisions faster than venture’s last cycle assumed they would have to, Jason Calacanis, Alex Wilhelm, Jenny Fielding, Dave McClure and Sam Lessin argue on This Week in Startups. Fielding’s example is a legal-tech founder who raised a $15mn Series A and, six months later, planned to return the money because he believed Claude and other models could erode the company’s long-term value. The same pressure is showing up in private markets, where demand for exposure to OpenAI and Anthropic is straining company controls over secondary sales, SPVs and liquidity.
OpenAI and Anthropic Are Compressing the Market for Thin AI Wrappers
Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures argues that OpenAI and Anthropic are moving into the application layer fast enough to threaten many AI startups built as thin wrappers on foundation models, while Jenny Fielding and Dave McClure contend that workflow depth, distribution and niche focus may still protect some companies. The broader debate links that pressure to a weak secondary market, a doubtful 2026 IPO rescue and a venture model Lessin says must shift away from multi-stage capital deployment toward early, priced exposure to scarce founder talent.
Cerebras’s Higher IPO Range Tests AI Infrastructure Demand
Alex Wilhelm and Jason Calacanis treat Cerebras’s raised IPO range as a test of how much public investors will pay for future AI inference demand and the quality of contracts with customers such as OpenAI. Ori Goshen makes a parallel case that enterprise AI’s hard problem is no longer choosing one model, but routing work across models, tools and inference strategies for cost, latency and accuracy. Across OpenAI’s deployment spinout, AI21’s orchestration pitch, Magrathea Metals’ brine-based magnesium plan and OpenClaw’s fading momentum, the article frames deployment as a question of incentives, constraints and where the bottleneck actually sits.