Meta faces the music in Texas, Perplexity inks publisher deals, and open-source AI flourishes

Top News

• Meta faces massive settlement — in the United States: Accustomed as we are to seeing the EU levy massive fines against American tech giants, here we have a twist. Texas has secured a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta for “illegally using facial-recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent,” Reuters reports.

• AI dealmaking flourishes: News that Australian design unicorn Canva is snapping up Leonardo.Ai caused waves recently, and not only because the acquirer is expected to list in the coming years. No, the Leonardo deal comes after the startup reached nearly 20 million registered users. That’s a huge number of potential new Canva fans. Terms were not disclosed. Elsewhere, AI search startup Perplexity.AI has come to commercial terms with select publishers. These, per The Verge, include a “double-digit” revenue share.

• Open-source AI continues to advance: Meta was originally a leading news item today thanks to its Segment Anything 2 machine learning model, which follows its static-image processing predecessor. Segment Anything 2 works with video. Recall that the Facebook parent company recently dropped new Llama 3.1 models that were very well received, throwing the gauntlet down in front of OpenAI, Anthropic, and other closed-source AI giants.

TWiST500

We’re expanding the TWiST500 this week to include several companies that raised notable rounds this year, marching towards the 100 names mark. We’ll be there by the end of the week.

Who just made the cut? A number of incredibly interesting Seed-stage startups, including FlexAI, CuspAI, Daydream, and SevenAI.

We will expand the dataset to include national HQ location, and perhaps last round data, so there’s still lots of work to do (we’re currently adding social media handles and Crunchbase links). But what matters the most is getting the right names onto the TWiST500. Do let us know if there is a company that you think we must include. ([email protected] or [email protected], please.)

And now, a small programming note:

TWiST fam! Episode 2,000 is approaching (at the end of August!). We are looking back at the last 1,000 episodes and compiling our favorite memories, news events, interviews, and funny moments. And we want to hear yours too!

• Send us your favorite TWiST moments over the last 1,000 eps

• We’ll review all submissions

• If we pick something that you flagged that we missed, we’ll credit you directly

We’ve had a number of super great submissions so far, including a number with videos included. We love it! More, please!

• Send your notes, thoughts, clips, and stories to [email protected] or message Bianca or Alex directly in TWiST Slack if you’re already there. Thank you!

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This Week in Startups

E1985: Etsy CEO Josh Silverman swung by the podcast to talk about how his company is reacting to the AI era. Etsy is best known for its hand-crafted goods that small creators sell. Jason and Silverman dug into how to build and maintain a unique marketplace, operating a company in a remote-friendly world, and how organic traffic flows are changing today.

E1984: Jason and Alex’s latest news roundtable dug into the Google-Wiz deal’s demise, new AI models from Meta, and even the latest UBI study. Wiz’s choice to pursue an IPO over a sale could yield greater returns down the road, but at what price is not clear. Meta’s new Llama 3.1 405b model, meanwhile, has put open-source AI at the front of the pack when it comes to performance, shaking up the artificial intelligence landscape for months to come.

E1983: Benchmark investor Sarah Tavel is back! Tavel and Jason discussed the critical role of governance and accountability in startups, and the relationship between hype, investment decisions, and startup promotion. And for the software fans, the venture capitalists discussed the challenges that SaaS faces in the market today. Tune in!

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