Bloomberg develops "BloombergGPT," Frank founder charged with fraud, LayerZero Labs raises $120M

Bloomberg has developed a generative AI model called BloombergGPT geared towards financial tasks; the LLM was trained on a dataset of 700B+ tokens (~200B more than GPT-3), with about half coming from Bloomberg’s financial data - Link 

LayerZero Labs, a blockchain infrastructure provider that helps build bridges between different protocols, raised a $120M Series B at a $3B valuation with participation from a16z, Sequoia, and others - Link

Charlie Javice, the founder of student loan-focused consumer fintech startup Frank, was arrested and charged with fraud by US prosecutors after allegedly having 4.2M+ fake accounts created and selling her startup for $175M based on those figures - Link

Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit has filed for bankruptcy; Branson’s Virgin Group invested more than $1B into the commercial satellite-launching space company - Link

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Jason kicks off the show by breaking down clips from a recent conversation between Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Adam Neumann about Saudi Arabia’s promising startup scene (2:44). This leads to him diving into new city concepts and Trump’s presidential campaign (13:01). Then, BioFluff CEO Martin Stübler joins the show to discuss his sustainable fashion alternative (30:44). - Link

Australia has banned TikTok from government-issued devices, following the US, UK, Canada, France, New Zealand, and others in recent months - Link

Canada’s privacy commissioner has opened an investigation into OpenAI in response to allegations that the company has collected and used personal data without consent - Link

Quantexa, a London-based startup that uses AI to help banks and other institutions detect fraud, raised a $129M Series E at a $1.8B valuation led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund - Link

Bloomberg sources: Apple is cutting a small number of roles within its corporate retail teams; impacted employees were responsible for constructing and maintaining Apple retail stores; this is Apple’s first known round of cuts post-2021, despite being likely very small - Link

This Week in Startups

E1712: Trump, Saudi, & Adam Neumann’s obsession with cities + BioFluff CEO Martin Stübler

E1711: Stephen Wolfram on AI’s rapid progress & the “Post-Knowledge Work Era”

E1710: Crypto’s de-platforming and the balkanization of AI with Vinny Lingham

E1709: Startup pitch competition: Jason invests $25K live!

E1708: Alibaba's six-way split, Disney cuts its metaverse team, Substack's raise & more

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