OpenAI cancels "side quests"

Top News

• OpenAI shifting resources to coding: At an all-hands OpenAI confab this week, CEO of Applications Fidji Simo announced to staffers that the company plans to cut back on “side quests” and distractions in order to nail “productivity in general,” and particularly “productivity on the business front.” That means a full court press on coding and enterprise applications for the company’s frontier models, as they attempt to keep pace with the runaway success of products like OpenClaw, not to mention Claude Code and Cowork from their chief rivals, Anthropic. What does this mean for projects like the Atlas browser, or the Sora social media slop app? Unclear for now.

• CCP penalizes Manus execs: Quick backstory: White hot AI agent makers Manus formed in China before relocating to Singapore, then got acquired in December 2025 by Meta in an estimated $2 billion deal. Now to the present day: The New York Times reports that the Chinese government is not happy with one of its highest-profile AI companies moving overseas, and is taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. According to the Times, officials from China’s National Development and Reform Commission recently held a meeting with Meta and Manus executives, expressing strong reservations about the deal. They’re also reportedly attempting to stop Manus executives from exiting China for Singapore. Apart from individual exit bans, it’s unclear what, if anything, China could legally do to block the deal. The Times suggests it’s possible that the government could take additional steps to secure any data can’t be exported, or might even consider declaring the entire transaction unlawful.

• BuzzFeed launches Branch Office: Last week, the web’s formerly-premiere viral trends and quiz destination announced that “substantial doubt” among leadership concerning its future prospects as a business. But perhaps all is not as lost as it seems? This week, co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti announced the company’s new spinoff at SXSW: Branch Office. But this is not another publishing or media play, Branch Office is the culmination of years of internal BuzzFeed experiments with AI apps and features. It serves as an incubator of sorts of consumer-facing AI apps, all of which are designed to encourage “creativity and connection.” Their first two apps are BF Island, a group chat app with AI photo-editing and meme-building features built in, and Conjure, a “once-a-day” photo-sharing app similar to BeReal. (Aww, remember them?)

TWiST 500

We’re saying a fond farewell to yet another TWiST 500 company this week. Stablecoin payment infrastructure provider BVNK has been acquired by Mastercard for “up to $1.8 billion.” The thinking here is fairly straightforward… Mastercard and rival Visa both see the writing on the wall and recognize that stablecoin use is going to ramp up significantly, particularly as more and more folks start empowering the AI agents to handle transactions on their behalf.

On a call with investors, Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert suggested it’s not just BVNK’s technology they’re after, but also its licenses to transact with stablecoins “in multiple geographies.” That global reach allows Mastercard to build out its own network “much faster.” BVNK currently enables sending and receipt of stablecoin payments across all major blockchain networks in over 130 countries.

Elsewhere in the T500… France’s leading AI outfit Mistral introduced its Small 4 model, which is quite large but only activates a small sub-section of its parameters per query, allowing it to handle more prompts and a faster pace than its predecessor.

Finally, prediction market giant Kalshi is being sued by yet another State Attorney General, Kris Mayes of Arizona, whose office claims that they’re running “an illegal gambling operation” and “taking bets on Arizona elections.” Kalshi is also currently being sued by the State of Nevada, where they take gambling even MORE seriously. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2263: On a Monday TWIST 500 special, Alex speaks to three amazing founders. First up, Matt Angle of Paradromics, whose company produces a revolutionary brain computer interface that could one day allow you to type at the speed of thought. Then, JetZero CEO Tom O’Leary shows us his startup’s proprietary fuel efficient wing-jets. Finally, Nutrisense CEO Dan Zavorotny demonstrates how continuous monitoring leads to better health outcomes.

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E2261: Alex welcomes a Wednesday panel of self-driving experts: Ben Seidl of Autolane, Ming Maa of Moove AV, and Nathan Parker of Edge Case Research. Together they delve into Uber’s new collaboration with Zoox in Vegas, the specific challenges of bringing autonomous vehicles to new cities and environments, how self-driving vehicles interact with one another on the road, and what’s still holding back the expansion of robotaxis in the US.

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