Meet the Moltbot... Same as the Clawdbot...

Top News

• Clawdbot gets a name change: In a largely unsurprising move, from an IP perspective, the viral AI assistant Clawdbot changed its name to “Moltbot.” The official Moltbot social media account looked on the bright side, noting that the app’s signature animal — the lobster — molts naturally as it grows. Creator Peter Steinberger, on his own account, gave us the real scoop: Anthropic insisted that he change the Claude-infringing name. Molt (née) Clawdbot is having quite a breakout week in the tech podcast world. We featured three up-start skill-designers on yesterday’s episode, and TBPN has Steinberger as a guest TODAY. Can the open-source #1 reason to get a Mac Mini possibly sustain this kind of momentum?

• Tether launches US stablecoin: The once-vilified crypto outfit released the world’s most popular stablecoin to date — the El Salvador-based USDT — but has not been active stateside since they were banned by the New York State Attorney General in 2021. The passage of the Genius Act, and the codification of rules surrounding stablecoins, has seemingly paved the way for Tether’s return, and the company issued a new US-focused stablecoin — USAT — via Anchorage Digital Bank this week. Cantor Fitzgerald will manage the Tether reserves for the new coin, seemingly ensuring compliance with all US laws. USAT is now available for trading on a number of US crypto exchanges.

• Flora grabs $42M: Flora is part of a crowded field of AI-powered design tools, but they seem to be carving out a viable niche. Customers include Brex, Alibaba, and the Lionsgate film and TV studio. Unlike many of its fast results-focused rivals, Flora centers more around the brainstorming and mind-mapping end of the creative process, with tools allowing designers to combine image, text, video, and AI outputs into a kind of interactive mood board that they can then refine into a more polished result. The new approach to thinking about creative interfaces raised $42 million in a Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures.

TWiST 500

DeepSeek soaks up a lot of the American press’ attention when it comes to upstart open-source Chinese AI models. But there’s as much of a domestic race for model supremacy in China as we have in the West, with numerous big-time rivals constantly eyeing the benchmarks and aiming for that top spot.

DeepSeek’s latest, V4, is expected some time next month. But two major Chinese AI players — Zhipu and MiniMax Group — have already gone public this year, collectively raising more than $1 billion.

And now TWiST 500 members Moonshot AI beat V4 out of the gate, with a new iteration of their flagship Kimi model, K2.5. Much like the latest GPT and Gemini releases, K2.5 is an “omni model,” meaning it can process test, images, and videos together within a single prompt. Moonshot also announced plans to release a direct rival to Anthropic’s massively popular coding tool, Claude Code.

Speaking of Anthropic… Yahoo launched a new AI-powered “answer engine,” known as Yahoo Scout, powered by Claude. When users as Scout a question, it will both search Yahoo’s data and content library, while also scanning the web, before coming up with its answer. Yahoo’s also porting over one of our favorite Claude features here at the pod: diligent citing of sources, so you can double-check the producer-bot’s work. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2240: It’s an all-Clawdbot deep dive TWiST. Jason’s back in Austin, and all anyone in American tech can talk about this week is the viral AI assistant, which thousands of developers are already running on newly-purchased dedicated Mac Minis. What is Clawdbot, and how can you put this 24/7 digital employee to work for you? Find out as Jason and Alex talk to the developers and influencers pushing the boundaries of what Clawdbot can accomplish, and writing the skills that are expanding its capabilities in real time.

E2239: It’s another TWiST Tokyo special edition, with our guests Max Weiss of Pacific Bays Capital, and American Medical Intelligence CEO Fred Almeida. We’re talking the future of medical tech, and why Fred thinks you’ll one day soon have an AI general practitioner that knows your history, and sends you out to specialists when you need human intervention and expertise. PLUS how Japan stays at the forefront of tech without being a manufacturing hub, and why so many Americans are willing to take pay cuts to enjoy the Tokyo lifestyle.

E2238: We’ve got two awesome TWiST 500 interviews coming your way in this brand-new TWiST. First, Alex sits down with Keller Cliffton of drone delivery startup Zipline to discuss their new $600 million raise (at a tasty $7.6B valuation), and how they’ve managed to scale up to over 2 million deliveries so quickly. THEN, Anastasis Germanidis of Runway gives us insight into World Models, and why they will likely power the next generation of Physical AI applications. Finally, we’ve got Jason’s thoughts on when it’s time to pivot vs. when founders should give up on their project entirely and move on.

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• Lemon.io: Building a great team is essential to any business. Lemon is a marketplace of vetted, experienced engineers ready to take your company to the next level. Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist

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