Finally you can Uber up a Zoox

Top News

• Zoox teams with Uber in Vegas: Starting later on this year — if all goes according to plan — you’ll be able to catch a ride around Las Vegas in a Zoox robotaxi via your Uber app. As today’s TWiST guest Ben Seidl of Autolane pointed out, a Zoox is NOT a car. It’s a unique kind of vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals — somewhat resembling a small bus — designed exclusively to serve as an autonomous commercial taxi. That means it still requires full approval from the federal government before it can actually deploy on roads commercially. (There are Zoox on the road today on the Vegas Strip, but they’re operating under an exemption, as a “demonstration,” rather than a commercial license.) If/when they gain approval, Zoox plans to launch an independent taxi service first, then make the vehicles available to rent via the Uber app.

• Nvidia invests in Nebius: Another day, another circular Nvidia mega-deal. This time, the iconic chipmaker is putting $2 billion into Amsterdam’s Nebius Group NV. Nebius owns data centers across Europe and the US specifically geared toward AI infrastructure. Under the new arrangement, Nebius promises to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of Nvidia systems in these centers before 2030. (Bloomberg notes that this is enough energy to power 3.8 million homes!) Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh points out that the company relies significantly on Nvidia chips, but that this measly $2 billion represents just a fraction of their overall infrastructure. According to Volozh, Nebius is putting $16-$20 billion into their inference-powering facilities overall this year.

• Quince closes Series E: Quince sells “affordable luxury” items at a discount, using a direct-to-consumer model, which cuts out middlemen like retailers and sells items direct from the factory or manufacturer. While the “fashionable looks at low low prices” model is something of an internet standard, Quince adds an AI-powered approach. They use the tech to predict weekly demand, and then place their orders and manage stock accordingly. It seems to be working: revenue passed $1 billion in 2025. So the company closed a $500 million Series E round this week, valuing the brand at a healthy $10.1 billion.

TWiST 500

Three more big stories about top TWiST 500 companies for your Wednesday catch-up.

• xAI: Business Insider reports that progress has stalled out on Macrohard, xAI’s AI agent project-slash Microsoft parody. The company had hired a group of more than 600 “AI Tutors,” paid to screen record themselves working and playing online, as a way of training AI agents to emulate human activity and behavior. BI quotes a months-old memo from a project lead to staffers, suggesting that there were “many flaws within the model,” requiring changes to how the team is collecting data. Work apparently never resumed after these issues were recognized. But fear not! Another Musk interest — Tesla — is adding some Macrohard employees to its Autopilot division, and the EV maker is moving forward with an agentic project of their own. Tesla’s “Digital Optimus” will also serve as an AI agent that operates a computer like a human, designed specifically for “autonomous software interaction, code generation, and real-time decision making.”

• Canva: The AI-forward design app introduced a new tool this week called Magic Layers. And that’s exactly what it provides. The AI tool takes flat images and turns them into Canva projects that a user can dive in and edit, moving around and extracting shapes, text, objects, and other components as if they were individual layers all along. So long, Lasso Tool, no one will miss you! This is actually a bit more powerful than some may realize, essentially allowing you to breathe new life into or reinvent any flat image on your computer. Less like a graphic design tool and more like a full-on image generator.

• Revolut: We’ve written a few times about the British fintech company’s attempts to secure a full banking license in their native UK. Well, the wait is finally over. The startup — which began life as pre-paid banking card for traveler’s — has been approved by local regulators and can offer a new range of financial services, including protected deposits up to £85,000, fully-functional bank accounts, and products like credit cards and personal loans. They’ve been operating under a restricted license since July 2024, after starting the application process way back in 2021. A reminder that government approval bureaucracy doesn’t necessarily move at startup pace!

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This Week in Startups

E2260: Andrej Karpahty’s Autoresearcher is blowing Jason’s mind. But… how exactly does it work? The OpenAI vet has protocol for his AI agent to recursively improve an LLMs performance one tiny step at a time, through a constantly evolving series of 5-minute experiments. Dig into how this works, and what it could mean for the future of AI agents, on TWiST. PLUS we’ve got 3 more demos from NetXD’s Suresh Ramamurthi, Rohan Arun of PhoneClaw, and Eugene Stuckless of Eir.

E2259: What is $TAO? We’re so glad you asked! On a TWiST special edition, we’re diving into the world of Bittensor and subnets. It’s a blockchain-based network divided into “subnets,” each of which power a different AI project, app, or tool. Find out how it all works — and how you can buy TAO and other subnet tokens, to own a small piece of the AI revolution — with special guests Mark Jeffrey (of Stillcore Capital) and Ala Shaabana (of Crucible Labs).

E2258: Big Wednesday show. We’ve got Erik Voorhees from privacy-forward Venice AI giving us the behind-the-scenes story of becoming OpenClaw’s default model (temporarily). PLUS Logan Allin of Fin Capital shares how he’s using generative AI to place smarter bets on founders. All that and two demos: George Pickett brings us into the OpenClaw Studio and David Kaufman shows us how Siteline helps keep track of agentic activity.

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