Top Stories
The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon for allegedly concealing surcharges that inflated ad-auction prices for over one million sellers, extracting tens of billions of additional dollars and passing along higher costs to consumers. — Federal Trade Commission
The Pentagon added Starshield AI's Grok for Government and ChatGPT Mil for unclassified work, providing the AI tools to 3 million-plus military personnel. — The Hill
OpenAI’s 200-day-old advertising business hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate as ChatGPT ads expand beyond the US. — CNBC
Nvidia will launch its new AI upscaler DLSS 5 on September 3 for RTX 50-series PCs and GeForce Now. The controversial tech uses AI to upgrade video game graphics, and has been likened to “motion smoothing for video games.” — The Verge
Top Funding Announcements
HiBob — The HR software company is raising more than $160M in a Salesforce-led round to expand its platform, valuing the business above $3.2B. — Dealroom
Felix Pago — The money-transfer startup raised $200M to expand beyond remittances into lending and savings for Latin American immigrants in the US. — Bloomberg
Polymarket — The prediction-market platform reportedly raised $300M from lead investor 1789 Capital as part of an approximately $1B round. — TechCrunch
Blue Voice — Raised $6M to build a Harvey-like AI assistant for police officers. — TechCrunch
Bolt — The checkout startup is raising up to $27M in founder-led bridge funding, including $5M from Ryan Breslow. — TechCrunch
A Message from Odoo
The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started for today at Odoo.com/twist
Top Tweets
This Week in Startups
Timestamps:
0:00 Is Hugging Face's Microduck the greatest side quest ever?
4:48 Jason puts Clem Delangue and Jensen Huang in charge of AI PR
10:37 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain
18:12 Top story: Dwarkesh Patel's "The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations"
18:39 Why agents act like people: they were trained on us
18:47 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou
21:06 "I know good PR when I see it"
22:28 The prompt Jason says OpenAI should have written instead
26:01 The data center backlash and the politicians who will flip
29:24 Rippling - Don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.
32:36 Guest: Anders Forslund, Heart Aerospace, and the X1's first flight
38:57 Turboprops vs. jets and the regional routes America lost
41:50 JSX, Santa Monica Airport, and 5,000 underused airports
44:11 Why Boeing won't build this: the innovator's dilemma
52:31 Guest: John Yu, Bitsec — Bittensor Subnet 60
54:18 How the subnet works: miners, validators, $10K a day
56:34 Bitsec vs. a frontier model: 160+ vulnerabilities to 60
58:54 Was the agent civilization story a pre-IPO PR play?
1:04:27 Sentios.io and continuous coverage
TWiST Partner Offers
Northwest Registered Agent: Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! — Learn more at www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain
CLA: Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou
Rippling: Don’t settle for AI that’s all talk. Head to Rippling.ai/twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.
Today’s Fascinating Fact from Harmonic
HiBob are the designers of Bob, an AI-powered HR management platform that helps businesses oversee their onboarding process, payroll, performance management, time tracking, and workforce analytics, all within a single unified system. They have over 2000 employees of their own to date, and have raised just under $575 million across 9 rounds. Founder Ronni Zehavi is a serial entrepreneur: past projects include CDN company Cotendo (acquired by Akamai Technologies) and cybersecurity venture Team8. He also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bessemer Venture Partners before starting HiBob.
Try it yourself at harmonic.ai
Subscribe to Us On Your Favorite Podcast Platforms
SF Live-Work Space Now Available
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.
The TWiST500 newsletter is the new, updated, and improved TWiST Ticker.
