Avocado: Across the Meta-verse

Top News

• Meta’s new model is months away: Meta’s recently-assembled superintelligence team is likely building a closed-source model, Bloomberg reports. The upcoming AI model, codenamed Avocado, is expected sometime in the Spring. Avocado is being constructed in part by leveraging several open source models — from Google, OpenAI, and Alibaba — a method called distillation. Historically, Meta built and released open-weight models that it could also use internally. By building a closed model similar to those offered by Anthropic and OpenAI, Meta could join the ranks of companies selling access to their AI technology.

• Tech giants spread their bets: American tech giants Microsoft and Amazon are investing heavily abroad. Microsoft told investors it would invest CAD$19 billion in Canada between 2023 and 2027, with “more than $7.5 billion CAD in the next two years.” Separately, both Microsoft and Amazon made investment pledges in India, some $17.5 billion (from 2026 through 2029) and $35 billion (through 2030), respectively. While the investments focus on AI work, it’s also not a surprise that — as the United States slows the rate at which it accepts immigrants of all skill levels — tech giants are looking to hire elsewhere.

• How close is GPT-5.2? The latest version of OpenAI’s GPT-5.x model family could be released as soon as this week, with hints that GPT-5.2 is already being tested inside products like Anysphere’s Cursor coding service. OpenAI’s GPT-5 launch was widely regarded as a disappointment in performance terms, a sentiment later exacerbated by the releases of strong AI models from Google (Gemini 3.0), xAI (Grok 4.1), and Anthropic (Claude 4.5). Reports indicate that GPT-5.2 will be an incremental upgrade to OpenAI’s existing technology; based on my recent experience with GPT-5.1, I’ll take any and all upgrades I can get my hands on.

TWiST 500

Data centers in space… so hot right now.

After TWiST500 company Starcloud launched its first GPU into space, the starting gun for putting compute into orbit en masse was fired. The company may not have the market to itself for very long.

The WSJ reports that Blue Origin, the SpaceX rival funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has “had a team working for more than a year on technology needed for orbital AI data centers.” At the same time, the WSJ writes that SpaceX has an upgraded version of its Starlink satellites coming that will be able to “host AI computing payloads,” once deployed.

Comments from Bezos in October that “we're going to start building these giant gigawatt data centers in space” in the next decade or two now make more sense.

Starcloud is not sitting still. Per CNBC reporting, the company’s first orbital H100 is up and running:

Here’s hoping that Starcloud doesn’t get snapped up by a terrestrial cloud giant, and instead builds a space-based computing empire. We could use more hyperscaler competition, I reckon, and with launch costs set to fall as new heavy-lift rockets work out their kinks, Starcloud has a real shot at pulling off its mission. — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2221: It’s a tasty TWiST parfait, with three different founder-focused layers. First, Lon and Alex look back at a 2016 chat between Jason and Zapier mastermind Wade Foster, about running an entirely remote team, raising seed money back in ‘12, and why MS Office was, at the time, their Holy Grail of integrations. PLUS Alex chats with Alembic’s Tomas Puig about the next generation of marketing analytics AND a brand new entry in our Gamma Pitch Deck competition.

E2220: Ads are probably coming to ChatGPT, but not JUST yet. Though a screenshot that appeared to show a Target ad in ChatGPT results spread like wildfire around social media, in fact, that was just one of those “brand integrations” allowing you to shop for Target merch within the popular chatbot. On TWiST, Jason and Alex dig deeper into the inevitable arrival of chatbot ads, and wonder aloud if anyone at OpenAI is really thinking deeply about how this will work, and how to confront backlash from a public that prefers their outputs ad-free.

E2219: Netflix wants to BUY Warner Bros… but is this just about wanting that sweet, sweet DC Comics IP? Or is there a secret plot embedded here to destroy the humble movie theater? We’re asking the TOUGH questions. Also… are Googlers gaming Polymarket? Why does Perplexity KEEP getting sued? AND a rundown of some of our fav startups from Y Combinator’s Fall ‘25 cohort.

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