Apple’s $500B AI server bet

Top News

• Apple’s $500B AI investment: The tech giant pledged to spend $500 billion over the next four years on American AI infrastructure, including a 250,000 sq. ft. facility to assemble advanced servers north of Houston, Texas. It’s part of an overall push by the Trump administration and the US tech industry to move more AI-related manufacturing away from the Chinese sphere of influence.

• Google’s Gemini coming to iOS?: Reporter Aaron Perris from MacRumors spotted some interesting code in Apple’s iOS 18.4 beta, suggesting that a Google Gemini integration may be coming soon. A line-up of Apple Intelligence features are expected to debut in iOS 18 or 19.

• Red light therapy devices are coming soon: A form of light therapy treatment called “photobiomodulation” exposes patients to low levels of red or near-infrared light, which reportedly helps them lose weight, look younger, and balance their moods. The research has shown promise, esp. in the realm of dermatology, but few of these results are conclusive. Photobiomodulation panels and masks are prohibitively expensive for now, but this may be about to change.

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While arguments persist about what sort of impact AI will ultimately have on unemployment levels, in some industries — like media and publishing — the impact is already significant and measurable. The US lost around 5,000 writing and journalist jobs in 2024 alone, a 59% spike from the year before.

Some freelance writers are now supplementing their regular income in an interesting, even counter-intuitive way: by helping to train the very same large language models (LLMs) that threaten to replace them at major publications.

Companies like TWiST500’s ScaleAI are hiring writers to help fine-tune and refine their training data and outputs by testing out different kinds of prompts, spotting misinformation or hallucinations, tweaking the sources employed by the model, and generally making spot-check improvements.

It’s the same kind of work a newspaper editor would’ve once done on behalf of a human writer, now performed on behalf of a thinking machine. ScaleAI’s data is already being used to train models for a number of the industry’s major players, from OpenAI to Meta to Microsoft. — Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2088: It’s an interview double-header guaranteed to make you smarter about AI and defense. First up, Jason chats with Bryan Hagris of Castelion about giving America a competitive edge on hypersonic missile technology. Then, Alex chats with Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell about their big pivot from data to AI-powered predictions.

E2087: It’s an all-news episode! Jason and Lon survey the collapse of EV truck startup Nikola, and suggest advice for founders looking to avoid the same pitfalls. Plus they take a look at Superhuman’s new AI email upgrade AND discuss ways Sam Altman could have avoided all of his top people jumping ship and launching their own OpenAI competitors.

E2086: Jason and Alex break down one of the craziest crypto stories yet - a $100M meme coin meltdown, insider trading, and Argentina’s president caught in the middle. Coffeezilla joins the show to explain how memecoins are rigged, why Dave Portnoy got a $5M refund while everyone else got wrecked, and what really went down with the LIBRA token.

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• Squarespace: Turn your idea into a new website! Go to https://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you’re ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• LinkedIn Jobs: A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Go to https://www.linkedin.com/twist to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

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Founder University

Applications are open for Founder University Cohort 10, a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program tailored towards navigating early-startup practices, building an MVP, and growing traction. Submit your application at Founder University— Cohort 10 will kick off Spring 2025!

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