Manus: The Funds of Fate

Top News

• Manus AI raising $500M: According to The Information, Butterfly Effect — the Chinese startup behind Manus AI — is currently negotiating a new funding round to the tune of $500 million. The company — which builds AI agents that can complete complex, multi-process tasks with minimal human guidance — previously raised cash last year at a $100 million valuation, but the hype and excitement about its technology has picked up considerably since then.

• CoreWeave cuts down IPO: The cloud computing company now seeks around $1.5 billion, rather than the initial $3.5-$4 billion figure that had previously been floating around. That comes out to 37.5 million shares at $40 a piece, rather than 49 million at $47-$55 each. According to Bloomberg, those estimates were made prior to a stock market slump and diminished optimism among investors.

• Crypto hit by major hacks in Q1: According to web3 platform Immunefi, the crypto industry as a whole lost $1.64 billion due to hacks and security breaches in Q1, setting a new all-time record. It’s a bit of a misleading number, though, as $1.46 billion of those losses come from the February Bybit heist alone. In all, North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group are believed to be responsible for a whopping 94% of the total losses.

TWiST500

Another day, another look at OpenAI, the largest and arguably most visible member of the TWiST 500 collective.

This week, they’ve gone mega-viral once again thanks to ChatGPT’s new AI image generation update, built atop the powerful GPT-4o model. It turns out, one thing ChatGPT can now do very well is quickly reproduce anime interpretations of uploaded photos, specifically themed to resemble the work of Japan’s iconic Stubio Ghibli. (That’s filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s company, responsible for animated classics including “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away.”)

Social media fans have been sharing Ghibli-inspired take-offs of all kinds of famous photographs and iconic memes, along with their own selfies, and several OpenAI executives have even gotten in on the fun. CEO Sam Altman personally reacted to the trend, and changed his avatar image on X to a “Twink Ghibli-style” image of himself.

Still, the impossible-to-ignore popularity of the trend once again raised thorny questions about copyright, artistic integrity, and intellectual property rights. Miyazaki himself is famously anti-AI and once described a tool being demonstrated for him as “an insult to life itself.” It’s pretty difficult to believe Ghibli licensed their animation style for this project, and OpenAI hasn’t responded to any questions about the quasi-legality of its anime image generator.

For the general public, which loves goofy social media trends and filters, there doesn’t seem to be a tremendous level of concern. The ChatGPT images have become so popular, Altman tweeted that the company’s “GPUs are melting,” and they’ve been forced to place (allegedly temporary) limits on the feature’s use.

So even if critics are right, and OpenAI is using this trend as a distraction from its core challenges — or as a purposeful and direct attack on artists and anti-AI creatives — for now, it seems to be working. - Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2103: On an all-new founder-focused TWiST, Lon, Jason, and Alex explore the 11x controversy: did the startup go TOO FAR in promoting its past clients, or was this just a simple and easy-to-fix oversight? PLUS the gang considers China’s massive growth in both AI and EVs AND chat about VC Gili Raanan’s insightful “four persona” theory on startup growth.

E2102: On a shockingly Jason-free episode of This Week in Startups (he was traveling!), Lon and Alex talk about 23andMe’s dramatic collapse and MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin mega-strategy. PLUS we’re featuring THREE fresh interviews with the teams behind some of our favorite startups: chipmakers Etched, security and privacy stack Skyflow, and smart medical cabinet makers MedServe.

E2101: On an all-new This Week in Startups, Jason, Lon and Alex answer burning questions from founders and entrepreneurs about running their companies, from tips for smoothing out collaborations to building products in public. THEN, more creators are jumping in with their own Tesla self-driving experiments, TechCrunch quietly sold itself to Regent, and more from the world of tech news.

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Angel University

Angel University is back! Jason and Mike, President at LAUNCH, are hosting our next live Angel.University workshop in person on Wednesday, April 23rd, in NYC. Jason will be teaching the strategies he’s used to invest $100M+ in 300+ startups over the past decade. Register at: angel.university.

Founder University

Applications are open for Founder University Cohort 10, a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program tailored towards navigating early-startup practices, building an MVP, and growing traction. Submit your application at Founder University— Cohort 10 will kick off Spring 2025!

LAUNCH Accelerator

Applications are open for the 34th cohort of the LAUNCH Accelerator; a 14-week program focused on fundraising and growth. We invest $125K in our accepted companies and help them raise their pre-seed or seed round. Submit your application at LAUNCH Accelerator.

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