DiscOrbs was RIGHT THERE!

Author

Alex Wilhelm
May 28, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Top News

  • Ads Rule Everything Around Me: TWiST500 company Discord has a new plan to make money. Users can earn their new digital currency, called ‘Discord Orbs,’ by interacting with content from advertisers or streaming “specific games to friends,” The Verge reports. The private social community platform is known for its gamer chops, but has become a nexus for communities far more diverse than simply those with linked Steam accounts. And after spurning a Microsoft offer a while back and swapping out its CEO, the company needs to get into IPO shape. Expect more monetization in the coming quarters.

  • DeepSeek updates: DeepSeek, another TWiST500 company, has updated its well-known R1 model, and you can download and play with it if you have sufficient hardware on hand. Which, if you are reading this on a Macbook from your couch, means probably not you. Still, it’s good to see DeepSeek stay current in the present-day AI wars. New models from Anthropic, Google, and Mistral are making waves — and if there’s one thing that foundation AI model companies need to do, it’s ship.

  • New broadsides in the chip wars: American chip design companies are being told to stop selling to Chinese companies, the FT reports. The news is the latest salvo in a burgeoning trade-war-cum-decoupling that the two nations are grappling with. After moves to limit the ability of Chinese companies to buy an even wider swath of gear from chip giant Nvidia, the latest decision is not a shock. But, Reuters notes, the policy change was not factored into the share prices of impacted companies. If you held Cadence, Synopsys, or Siemens shares, we apologize for the turbulence.

TWiST500

Two TWiST500 companies are joining forces! Yes, the boffins of Telegram and xAI have come together to foment a deal that will bring the AI company’s Grok family of models into the social messaging service’s ecosystem.

This is not a zero-cost partnership, but instead a distribution deal for xAI. The Musk-founded AI company that competes with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others will pay Telegram $300 million for the one-year deal to “distribute Grok to Telegram’s billion+ users and integrate it into its apps.”

Past the $300 million in cash, Telegram gets an equity stake from xAI “plus 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions” that it sells. That’s a tasty deal for the messaging service. Why would xAI pay to become Telegram’s AI partner? The simple answer is reach — Telegram claims more than a billion users, so Grok could become one of the most-used AI technologies in the world overnight — but also data. Grok has access today to X data as the two companies recently merged, but it, like all AI companies, wants more.

We’ve mostly seen AI model companies sign deals to purchase access to certain journalistic materials and other copyright-protected media. This is slightly different. The deal is a bit like if Anthropic paid Meta a pile of cash to become the prime choice model inside of WhatsApp. That would never happen, of course, as Meta has its own AI models — but there are only so many mass-market chat services and AI model companies to mix and match.

Telegram likely welcomes the cash infusion, but it’s far from pinching pennies. In 2024 the company’s revenue soared to $1.4 billion (from $342 million in 2023), leading to a profit above the $500 million mark. Perhaps it will do even better this year, thanks to xAI — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2130: On Friday’s pre-holiday TWiST, Jason, Alex and Lon talk about President Trump’s latest tariff announcement and its potential impact on Apple and iPhones. Plus, Claude gets a fresh upgrade, OnlyFans may be for sale, and the crew debates whether or not we really need “smart” toilets. PLUS the final round of the Founder Friday city competition! See who wins!

E2129: On a new TWiST, Jason and Alex are talking OpenAI’s collaboration with Jony Ive and predicting what this will mean for the future of AI hardware. PLUS Tesla and Waymo are battling it out for robotaxi market share, Microsoft partners with xAI, and Congress debates the stablecoin GENIUS Act. All that and Jason’s shoutout to influential online broadcaster (and “Dilbert” creator) Scott Adams.

E2128: On a rare Alex-free episode of TWiST, Lon and Jason update viewers on the latest in the Rippling vs. Deel corporate espionage saga, which now has more chapters than the Jason Bourne franchise. Plus are Firecrawl’s AI agent job postings just a marketing stunt(?), Jason’s thoughts on spotting “world class design,” and a chat with Prandtl Dynamics CEO Parth Mahendru about his innovative sonic anti-drone systems.

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