Top News
OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 models coming soon: The US government has granted the AI giant permission to release its new line of GPT-5.6 variants — flagship Sol and smaller/faster/cheaper options Luna and Terra — to global users this week, following a limited release to a “small group of trusted partners” in June. Axios reports that the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards submitted the models to “additional testing,” and held meetings with the OpenAI team, before approving the models for public release. And this is not the only high-profile OpenAI announcement of the day. The company also introduced an upgraded ChatGPT Voice mode, powered by its GPT-Live-1 models. The goal is to make users feel like they’re having more natural, realistic conversations with their favorite chatbot, so it’s been built with “duplex architecture,” allowing the app to both listen and speak at the same time.
Blue Origin taking first outside funding: The rocket maker from Amazon icon Jeff Bezos plans to raise a fresh $10 billion in funds at a $130 billion valuation. This is the very first outside fundraising in the company’s history, though Bezos still plans to contribute $2 billion of his own money, raised by selling Amazon stock. Hedge fund Coatue Management is putting up an additional $4 billion. Blue Origin, of course, competes directly with Elon Musk’s newly-public SpaceX (now SpaceXAI) in not just making rockets and lunar landers but also hawking satellite internet service.
Paradigm pivots to AI and robots: Just over 3 years after JCal famously urged crypto companies to “pivot to AI,” venture firm Paradigm has finally taken his advice to heart. While Paradigm has historically (with some exceptions) focused on crypto companies, their third and latest $1.2 billion fund will feature bets outside that sector, particularly in the venture-friendly fields of AI and robotics. The firm has about $11.9 billion in AUM as of the end of 2025, not including investments from its most recent fund (which include delivery startup Zipline and space defense concern True Anomaly). Their biggest crypto-based success story to date has been breakout prediction market Kalshi, which is now valued at a hefty $22 billion.
TWiST 500
We love an opportunity to write in this space about an under-the-radar T500 company that’s doing cool stuff, rather than just covering Anthropic’s latest new feature / dire warning for humanity… So imagine our delight at having not one but TWO fresh announcements from long-time T500 favorites.
Up first: Prime Intellect, which helps enterprises and organizations train their own AI agents and agentic systems without turning over their valuable data and IP to frontier labs. We’ve heard about this trend a LOT lately, on “This Week in AI,” from Palantir’s Alex Karp on CNBC, and elsewhere… Turning over all of your company’s hard-earned intelligence to a potentially untrustworthy partner like OpenAI or Anthropic gives them too much insight into your business, making you dependent on their services, and ultimately giving them an opportunity to move into your sector and crowd you out. Instead, Karp (and JCal) urge founders and CEOs to train their own models, and put that intelligence to work for themselves.
Enter Prime Intellect, which aims to turn companies into “their own AI labs,” training and refining models for specific, internal tasks. They’ve raised a $130M Series A at a $1 billion valuation.
Next: the charmingly named SambaNova Systems, which does NOT sell AI-powered dance lessons. Instead they design custom AI chips for running inference tasks, at lower cost with greater efficiency. While every AI chip company keeps at least one eye on industry leader Nvidia, SambaNova’s offerings are actually designed to use alongside Nvidia GPUs, rather than competing with them directly. The company’s SN40 and SN50 chips run a specific portion of the inference process — “decode” — very quickly, which in turn frees up the Nvidia chips for other vital tasks (such as training).
Intel’s venture arm is an early investor, and the startup announced that they’ve signed mega-bank JPMorgan Chase & Co as a new customer. So it’s perhaps not surprising that they’ve raised $1 billion this week in a Series F round at a tasty $11 billion valuation. – Lon
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This Week in Startups
E2308: First up, Alex chats with Hanover Park CEO and co-founder Chris Hladczuk about what $100 trillion+ in global assets are being overseen by what he calls “human duct tape.” That is, teams of accountants working in back offices, patching together important data and results from a variety of legacy applications (like QuickBooks and Bill.com) that are essentially holding them hostage. His startup suggests that AI is the answer. PLUS Alex and Lon look back on a classic TWiST chat from March 2020 between Jason and Figma CEO Dylan Field.
E2307: Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today’s problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy’s Aileen Lee, Floodgate’s Mike Maples, and Lerer Hippeau’s Ben Lerer joined Alex to dig into exiting pre-AI startups, rising valuations, token spend, why they are keeping their funds small, and whether the government just tripped OpenAI and Anthropic!
E2306: It’s the debut of our new Summer 2026 series “TWiST All Stars.” We’re inviting back some of Jason’s favorite guests from throughout the long history of the pod, and we’re kicking things off with one of his “Besties,” investor and 8090 co-founder/CEO Chamath Palihapitiya. He’s talking about the groundbreaking development platform, which is helping enterprises save money and protect their data by building out their own internal software. Plus he shares with Jason his origin story, why he started the Learn With Me and Drink With Me communities, his advice for young people graduating college in the age of AI, and more.
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