There really is a Polymarket for everything

Top News

• Soldiers allegedly placed wagers on strikes: The Israeli government has accused a group of insiders — including some army reservists — of using classified information to place winning bets on Polymarket. And not just any old classified information, but information about upcoming military strikes. One reservist and one civilian, both unnamed, have been indicted for security offenses, bribery, and obstruction of justice. “Insider Trading” on prediction markets has become a hot topic of late — though typically about sports or halftime shows rather than military operations — with some expressing outrage and others arguing it’s not a problem. (It definitely makes the predictions more accurate!)

• You can Seedance if you want to: Chinese giant ByteDance’s latest text-to-video generator, Seedance 2.0, has gone viral on social media. Prompts can combine text, images, video, and audio, and the output has been widely noted for its eerily lifelike ability to replicate human faces and emotional expression, plus Hollywood-style visual effects and camera movements. You may have seen that clip of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt on a rooftop in a ruined city… That was Seedance 2.0. “Deadpool” writer/producer Rhett Reese likely summarized much of the industry’s reaction when he posted “it’s likely over for us.”

• Ever raises $31M for EV marketplace: The startup is building an “AI-first, full-stack auto retail business” specifically for EVs. Think: eBay for your Tesla. Their new $31 million round was led by Palo Alto’s Eclipse, with participation from Saudi Arabia’s Jameel family (who are also early backers of EV maker Rivian). And about that “AI-first” part: Jiten Behl of Eclipse told TechCrunch that a lot of auto marketplaces have “bolt-on” AI tools that don’t really upgrade the car-buying experience. Ever plans to use the tech to reimagine and simplify the used car process end-to-end, training AI agents to guide customers cleanly through every step while keeping humans in the loop as needed.

TWiST 500

So many stories to get through about Anthropic! We haven’t seen one AI company absolutely dominate the TWiST 500 column like this since the heyday of OpenAI hype.

Our top story: The ‘Throp closed a $30 billion round at a $380 billion post-money valuation. That’s the second-biggest private financing round in Silicon Valley history, behind only… you guessed it… OpenAI’s $40 billion raise last year. Anthropic’s new round was led by Coatue and GIC, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore. (It also includes previously announced investments from Microsoft and Nvidia.)

Sadly, for frontier AI companies, as fast as the money comes in, it goes right back out. Also this week, Anthropic pledged $20 million to a new Super PAC — Public First Action — that will favor politicians on the state and federal level seeking to regulate AI development. This pits Anthropic’s lobbying efforts in direct opposition to their overall rival OpenAI, which has pledged donations to the Leading the Future Super PAC. They funnel cash to politicians and organizations that aim to block safety regulations on AI companies.

Some AI insiders — including Jason’s bestie and AI Czar David Sacks — have suggested that Anthropic’s frequently-expressed concerns about AI safety are a fear-mongering ploy, an attempt to expand their moat and exploit a first-mover advantage over newer entrants into the AI race via regulatory capture. Then again, at least some at Anthropic clearly do take safety concerns very seriously. Consider researcher Mrinank Sharma, who departed the company this week due to vaguely-stated global security concerns.

Finally on our Anthropic docket, Amazon instructed employees not to use the company’s AI coding helper, Claude Code, for any production code or live products without explicit approval. Instead, Amazon hopes to push staffers into using its in-house AI coding assistant, Kiro. (Kiro does in fact run on Anthropic’s Claude, but includes tooling and settings calibrated specifically for the Amazon Web Services infrastructure.)

In a testament to the mega-popularity of Claude Code, a number of Amazon employees are up in arms about the decision. One internal discussion thread found around 1,500 Amazon staffers supporting a push to formally adopt Claude Code as their favored coding assistant. Most companies would kill for that kind of product loyalty. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2248: OpenClaw Mania continues on TWiST! Today, Jason welcomes former LAUNCH staffer Presh Dineshkumar, who shows off how he’s using Replicants behind-the-scenes to simplify workflows at his startup, The Wellness Company. (He’s named his bot Eywa, and she has access to his product and his emails.) PLUS we’re joined by special guests Vishnu and Sean Liu, whose OpenClaw projects are so impressive, Jason offers to invest right on the spot.

E2247: Two weeks is several YEARS in OpenClaw development time, so we brought back our first-ever guest experts Alex Finn and Matt Van Horn for a little catch-up session. Matt showed up all of his upgrades to Jason’s favorite OpenClaw skill, “Last30Days,” while Alex introduced us to his 8-bit virtual office full of individual AI agents. They each have distinct specializations, and work together and collaborate on complex tasks in a virtual workplace (complete with its own virtual water cooler). Check out how it works on a brand new TWiST.

E2246: It’s another OpenClaw deep dive on TWiST, as Jason chats with Producer Oliver about LAUNCH’s new “Ultron.” We’re now using a single dashboard to monitor all of our Replicant activities, to gauge just how much they can really accomplish on their own, without any human intervention. Plus we’re chatting with Alex Cheema of ExoLabs about helping everyday consumers run powerful frontier LLMs at home on their own devices. AND congratulations to Ryan Yanneli and NextVisit, the BIG WINNERS of our Gamma Pitch Deck Competition. They’re walking away with a $25K investment from LAUNCH and our pals at Gamma.

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