Banking goes Beast Mode

Top News

• MrBeast buys banking app: Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson is the world’s #1 most popular YouTube personality, best known for hosting extreme stunts and challenges both on that platform and on his Amazon Prime Video reality competition series "Beast Games.” Now he’s getting into finance, acquiring the consumer banking app Step Mobile via his company, Beast Industries, in a deal reportedly valued north of $1 billion. The app aims to help young people learn about finance and set up their first bank accounts. That project dovetails nicely with Donaldson’s primary audience (currently aging up from the tween and teen demos into young adulthood), and his long-time desire to start producing more financial content for his channel. It’s not Beast’s first-ever step into the business world; he also distributes the popular Feastables line of snacks and candies.

• Study: AI makes you work harder: New research seemingly confirms what many tech underlings have long suspected: AI tools frequently intensify workloads rather than reducing or eliminating them altogether. Researchers from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business spent 8 months reviewing generative AI tools and how they changed work habits at an unnamed US tech company with around 200 employees. They found that — while using the tools — employees tended to work at a faster pace, for long hours, on a broader scope of tasks, all without ever being asked by managers to put in extra effort. The results suggest that the AI tools empowered employees, making them feel more capable of taking on more responsibilities, and thus making their work more rewarding. It’s something of a ‘best case scenario’ for C-suite execs investing in more AI tools, and a fresh counter-argument to that infamous and constantly-cited MIT survey from last August concluding that 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail.

• Neara makes 3D models of power networks: The Australian startup creates “physics-enabled digital twins” of critical infrastructure, such as electrical grids. These finely detailed 3D models help utility companies, repair crews, and other insiders predict how different kinds of facilities will respond to disasters like storms and fires, improving safety while saving time and money on extensive, pain-staking inspections. This was already a useful technology as service providers around the globe brace for more extreme weather events, but also, the explosion of data centers has created fresh demand for exactly these kinds of predictive insights. Cities need to ensure that their grids will be able to handle surging demand for power, and what better way to do that than with some finely detailed 3D models? This week, Neara raised a fresh $63 million USD Series D round this week, led by TCV.

TWiST 500

First off, a big congrats to T500 mainstays Rippling! The HR and payroll platform debuted their first-ever Super Bowl ad, taking inspiration from Netflix’s “I Think You Should Leave” and HBO’s “The Chair Company.” Comic actor Tim Robinson stars in a new string of five ads for Rippling as a CEO bent on revenge, who can’t enact his evil schemes because of his company’s cumbersome on-boarding and orientation processes. It’s maybe a bit of a long way around for viewers who aren’t already familiar with Rippling (or alt comedy!), but it’s at least going to help get their names out there.

In other T500 news, Databricks completed a new $5 billion funding round (with $2 billion in fresh debt) at a staggering $134 billion valuation. But not without cause! Their ARR exceeded $5.4 billion in Q1, a 65% year over year increase from 2025. What’s boosting this insane growth? Agentic AI, of course. D-Bricks helps enterprise clients organize and protect their data while also using it to train custom agents. (Think of it as a custom Clawdbot that’s somewhat less susceptible to prompt injection.) They’re getting pretty sizable for a private company at this point, but co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC that they’ll only go public “when the time is right.”

Speaking of notable, even iconic, companies still hanging out in the TWiST 500, let’s talk Discord. The all-in-one community platform is moving over to an All Age Verification, All The Time strategy, defaulting all accounts to moderated “teen appropriate” profiles unless users opt-out and prove they’re of age. (Those teen profiles can’t access age-restricted services, can’t speak aloud in the platform’s “stage” livestream channels, and get warnings before accepting new friend requests. Plus there are automated DM filters, keeping strangers at bay, and content filters around media deemed overly graphic. It’s a lot.)

This, of course, comes on the heels of a global movement to protect young people from the dangers of social media and unmoderated user-generated content, including stringent new regulations in the UK and Australia. Currently, users who want to escape Teen Profile Jail have the option of submitting a government ID or taking a selfie and relying on AI age verification tools (which have had their own set of challenges). Still an imperfect system, but then again, there’s a lot of sketchy material floating around on Discord for those who know where to look… – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2246: It’s another OpenClaw deep dive on TWiST, as Jason chats with Producer Oliver about LAUNCH’s new “Ultron.” We’re now using a single dashboard to monitor all of our Replicant activities, to gauge just how much they can really accomplish on their own, without any human intervention. Plus we’re chatting with Alex Cheema of ExoLabs about helping everyday consumers run powerful frontier LLMs at home on their own devices. AND congratulations to Ryan Yanneli and NextVisit, the BIG WINNERS of our Gamma Pitch Deck Competition. They’re walking away with a $25K investment from LAUNCH and our pals at Gamma.

E2245: HQ Trivia legend Scott Rogowsky joins the show to tell Jason and Alex about his new livestreamed in-app game show, Savvy. (Think of it like Wordle meets HQ Trivia meets “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”) Join us for a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the rise and fall of the once-viral trivia game, and a sneak peek at Scott’s new project. PLUS Alex chats with Dr. Trevor Bennett of Starfish Space about the Otter Spacecraft and why orbital paths around Earth need so much clean-up.

E2244: In our final TWiST Tokyo update, Jason welcomes The League founder Amanda Bradford and Uber veteran Will Barnes to discuss the TOP priorities for early stage founders. These are the areas where they can’t afford to lose focus for even a week. Find out why it’s so important to keep a close eye on your expenses, why trust and reliability are so crucial, even for an MVP, why distribution should always be top of mind, and more vital lessons from the trenches.

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