Top Stories
An OpenAI model breached private files on an Australian health portal during testing, then went unreported for months, prompting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to rebuke Sam Altman and spotlight glaring gaps in AI oversight. — CBS News
Meta unveiled $1,299 VR glasses weighing 100 grams, shifting computing into an external pack to create a lighter alternative to Apple’s Vision Pro. — Bloomberg
The US and China extended their tariff and rare-earths truce through January 10 as Presidents Trump and Xi opened negotiations covering trade, AI-related incidents, and Iran. — CNBC
Claude agents uncovered a previously unknown CRISPR-like enzyme system in bacteriophages, prompting Anthropic to open an internal biology lab. — Anthropic
Meta unveiled Muse Charm, a pocketable, fingerprint-activated companion for its Muse agent shipping in December, giving the company a relatively low-risk test of always-present AI hardware beyond smart glasses. — TechCrunch
Top Funding Announcements
Modal Labs — The AI infrastructure startup is reportedly discussing a new round at a $15B valuation, months after raising $355M, though its size, stage, lead investor, and spending plans remain undisclosed. — Reuters
Island — The enterprise browser security startup raised a $400M round led by Evolution Equity Partners to fund R&D, international expansion, and workforce growth as businesses confront AI-enabled threats. — CNBC
Numeral — The AI platform automating sales tax, VAT and GST raised a $100M Series C led by Insight Partners to enter new industries and expand its product, engineering and go-to-market teams. — Tech Funding News
Mirendil — The AI research automation startup is discussing a pre-product round of up to $1B led by Kleiner Perkins to develop systems that plan, run, and refine scientific experiments. — Tech Funding News
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This Week in Startups
Timestamps:
0:00 What seed rounds looked like then: Fitbit's $2M seed
2:38 Jenny's Techstars NYC years and the two-unicorn mug
7:14 All-In Summit: Trump calls Jensen Huang onstage. Staged or not?
8:19 P(doom) roundtable + Dave's AI sovereign wealth fund prediction
9:31 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
12:58 The AI intel error that nearly triggered a US-China incident
17:07 "McClure's Law": a human with AI is the real risk
19:22 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist
21:00 Stripe + OpenRouter: an anti-fraud play, not a routing play?
22:30 Seed valuations: median $8M (2017) to $28M today
23:21 Instinct: $2.5B to a reported $10B in weeks
29:12 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.
43:24 Opus 5.5 vs. GPT-6 Sol: the same-day price war
46:14 Gun to your head: open-weight models or frontier labs?
50:23 Secondaries: the top 30 names vs. everyone else
51:53 Why fintech and healthcare are unloved (and Jason's Robinhood bet)
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