Pros and Confer

Top News

• Signal creator returns with AI assistant: Entrepreneur and computer security expert Moxie Marlinspike, once head of security for Twitter, is best known as the creator of the Signal encryption protocol, and the popular messaging app that bears its name. His latest project is Confer, an open source AI assistant that does for chatbots what Signal did for your DMs, protecting them end-to-end to assure no one else is peeking in on your sensitive prompts or outputs. Everything runs on open source software that users can verify is working cryptographically. This, of course, has both privacy and legal implications, and it’s not purely theoretical. There’s already precedent for the government ordering companies like OpenAI to preserve chat logs, and the company’s CEO Sam Altman has publicly warned users that interactions with ChatGPT are not eligible for the kind of confidentiality protection we customarily give to lawyers, therapists, and priests.

• Complaints about Roblox’s age verifier get louder: A widely-shared report from Wired suggests that Roblox’s age verification system is going haywire, misidentifying the IRL ages of both child and adult users. Verifying your age to use the beloved online game and social community for young folks became mandatory in 2026, and requires users to submit either a government ID or a selfie, which the system analyzes using tech provided by third party vendor (and TWiST 500 member) Persona. There is a methodology for contesting your estimated age, but for kids who manage to sneak through with adult permissions (or convince their parents to help them cheat the system), that doesn’t really apply.

• Polygon Labs picks up two crypto startups: When you’re pushing into the crowded stablecoin space — domain to fintech giants like TWiST 500 standouts Stripe — every extra edge helps. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that blockchain company Polygon Labs is acquiring not one but two smaller companies — Coinme and Sequence — for an undisclosed sum that’s somewhere over $250 million. According to CEO Marc Boiron and Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal, the new acquisitions will help fuel the network’s stablecoin efforts. Coinme is releasing crypto ATMs that convert cash into digital currency, while Sequence beefs up blockchain infrastructure.

TWiST 500

It’s a big news day for two cutting-edge AI chipmakers on the TWiST 500 line-up.

First, The Information reports that Cerebras is raising a fresh $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation. The company’s best known for its Wafer Scale Engine (WSE), a line of extremely tiny processors boasting compute, memory, and interconnect fabric, designed to power the “supercomputers” of tomorrow. They’re coming off of an eventful 2025, announcing a cohort of new datacenters across the US and Europe, partnering with both Meta on its Llama API and the US military, and unveiling their open-weight Qwen3-32B LLM model for “high speed reasoning and performance.”

Then there’s Etched, a TWiST 500 AI concern developing ASICs (or Application Specific Integrated Circuits) for compute-heavy AI workloads. They’re more efficient than Nvidia’s already-iconic GPUs, and work specifically on transformer AI models (which makes them an ideal fit for releases from companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic). According to CEO Gavin Uberti, one Sohu server replaces 160 of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs. That’s certainly an inviting option, and explains why investors like Stripe, Peter Thiel, and Palantir all jumped into the company’s latest $500 million funding round.

Moving away from chips, but only sorta, we come to our last update for today… Defense startup Onebrief raised $200 million in a Series D round, and also acquired Battle Road Digital, which produces “war game”-style simulation software for the US military. Onebrief’s AI-powered platform helps keep the Department of Defense organized, and aids leadership in planning and coordinating complex military operations. Can you believe this kind of sensitive work was still being done with pen and paper, or long email threads, until pretty recently? It’s true! – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2234: In a special Tuesday ep, Jason chats with Alex Shieh of The Antifraud Company. Did you know that, under the US government’s False Claims Act, Americans who uncover fraud get to keep up to 30% of the recovered funds? It’s such a good deal, Shieh turned it into a business model for his startup. PLUS on the latest TWiST Flashback, we take a look back at a classic 2016 interview with Boom founder Blake Scholl.

E2233: In our first-ever TWiST episode from Tokyo, Jason chats with Hyre founder and ex-recruiter Sho Takei. He’s taking what he learned hiring international teams for companies like Uber and CloudKitchens, and using it to help other companies not just bring in top employees, but build out effective teams. Hear about his experiences working for “super-pumped” friend of the pod Travis Kalanick, his thoughts on establishing your company culture, and much more.

E2232: Jason is off to Tokyo for an international edition of Founder University… BUT FIRST, he and Alex are considering two blockbuster tech mega deals that are apparently in the works. Hot community app Discord and fitness app Strava are BOTH circling big-time IPOs. Hear why Jason thinks Strava proves that data is the ultimate moat for consumer apps. PLUS, Producer Oliver stops by to showcase the hottest new products and gadgets from this year’s CES in Las Vegas.

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