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• Is superintelligence just around the corner? In a letter shared publicly in advance of Meta’s Q2 2025 earnings report, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg writes that in “the last few months,” his company has “begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves.” That means, he argues, that “developing superintelligence is now in sight.” A self-improving AI system would theoretically have no upper bound to its capacity, other than compute, storage, data, and bandwidth. Meta has lots of all of those. Let’s see how the letter plays with Wall Street.

• Palo Alto Networks buys CyberArk: In a $25 billion megadeal, cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks will snap up CyberArk, another public company that works in the identity space. Identity — software you use when you use Okta to log into an approved-work app — has long been in the business of helping humans access software and data. In the future, the Palo Alto Networks-CyberArk combo pitches, agents will also need identity services. So, the two companies want to work together to secure the agentic future. Shares of Palo Alto networks lost more than 5% today, adding to losses stemming from when the deal was first reported.

• Everyone wants to know your age: As the UK contorts itself into knots trying to age-gate swaths of the Internet, there’s movement afoot in the United States to do something similar, albeit from the corporate end of things rather than the central government. Google is starting to “use an age estimation model to detect whether Account users are under or over 18,” 9to5Google reports. Signals could include what videos you’ve watched on YouTube. Are the Internet’s free-wheeling days behind us?

TWiST500

The entire technology industry took note when Cloudflare dropped its Pay Per Crawl service. Instead of waiting for major publishers to sort out copyright rules in court, or tapping our feet until Congress takes a shot at passing rational AI legislation, Cloudflare took the technology route. Pay Per Crawl would set a price for AI crawling and block scraping that was not paid for.

Instead of arguing about whether we need a mesh door, a swinging door, or a bank vault, Cloudflare simply said we’ll slam the entire door shut unless you pay. Pay Per Crawl is in closed beta for now.

Meanwhile, one-off deals are still being made. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon will pay a reported $20 to $25 million per year to “license a broad range of New York Times content." The deal was announced earlier this year, but we hadn’t determined what price Seattle will pay the publication until now.

With Cloudflare (public) and the New York Times (public) and Amazon (public) making moves and cutting deals, there are a number of TWiST500 companies working on the same problem. A key question before each of them is what impact the Cloudflare system will have on their own business prospects, but I think that there are two different use-cases coming to the fore:

• Licensing for training: When you need to ingest all the information at once. This is probably best executed using a marketplace that links select publishers to interested AI compamies.

• Payment for inference pings: In contrast, when an AI product wants to ping a website to answer a user query (inference), it would be unwieldily to set deals with all potential websites.

So startups like Created by Humans and TollBit might find their niche in the licensing context, while Cloudflare and Pay Per Crawl answer the second. It would be a great turn of fate if we wound up with both public and private companies helping to solve a current market quandary, instead of merely watching the bigger firms walk away with all the business. — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2157: We’re breaking down some media stories, so Lon’s joining Jason and Alex to talk about Astronomer’s viral response to the Coldplay Canoodling meme (starring Gwyneth Paltrow!) and Sydney Sweeney’s extremely divisive American Eagle ad. (It’s not EXACTLY tech but there are some founder lessons here for sure!) Plus, Figma’s big IPO, everything that went wrong with the Tea app, and why Jason thinks app stores should ban “anonymous” forums.

E2156: Jason just got back from the big All-In AI Summit in DC, and he’s got a ton of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and observations to share. Hear about his immigration back-and-forth with VP JD Vance, his solar power debate with Energy Sec. Wright, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su’s thoughts on AI job displacement, and even getting a shoutout from POTUS himself. PLUS Alex and Jason have a little free trade vs. tariff tet-a-tet, and we’re answering YOUR top queries from Reddit.

E2155: Alex returns with another three awesome TWiST 500 founder interviews. FIRST, Trey Holterman from Tennr on streamlining the process of seeing a health care specialist. THEN, Gill Verdon tells us about the future of thermodynamic computing and how it could fuel the AI revolution. FINALLY, Tyler Denk from Beehiiv on hitting $20M ARR, maintaining product velocity, and how his newsletter service differs from Substack.

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Founder U is coming to the MENA region!

Our 12-week pre-accelerator—designed to help early-stage founders build and grow—kicks off this fall in Saudi Arabia. The first cohort launches in Riyadh on November 3rd, followed by in-person and virtual sessions throughout the program. Founders in MENA: this is your chance to turn your idea into a business and get world-class insights on building a successful startup. Apply today: https://mena.founder.university/

LAUNCH Accelerator

Our current Accelerator batch is graduating! Watch 11 strong startups pitch to Jason and our investor-judges. We are livestreaming the event on Monday, July 28th at 12:30 PM PT. Register here.

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Need a flexible living and working environment in San Francisco? This thoughtfully designed loft-style residence at 787 Bryant St., the heart of the vibrant SOMA district and the city’s creative hub, is now available for rent or purchase. Check the listing for more details.

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