What's $5 trillion between friends?

Top News

• Nvidia binks a $5T market cap: In a world first, a company’s worth has crossed the $5 trillion threshold. What drove the GPU giant’s latest gains? Hopes that it will soon be able to sell its newest chips in China. Recall that earlier this year Nvidia, the US government, and the Chinese government got into a scrap over H20 chips built by the company that were tuned for sale in China. First the US government blocked the sale, and then it demanded a cut, with the Chinese government later deciding to discourage their purchase. Perhaps there’s a new path forward for Nvidia gear in China brewing, even if it won’t make the domestic China hawks happy.

• Bending Spoons buys AOL: TWiST500 company Bending Spoons — a European roll-up shop somewhat akin to the historical IAC — is buying AOL from Apollo. The massive private equity concern purchased AOL when it snapped up Yahoo from Verizon a few years back, later choosing to sell of pieces (like TechCrunch). Having worked for AOL, Yahoo, Verizon, and Apollo thanks to corporate horse-trading over the years, let me simply say that I look forward to seeing who buys AOL’s carcass next.

• Cursor debuts new model: Known for being an Anthropic customer, AI coding tool Cursor has now trained a model of its own. Launched as part of a larger package of new capabilities, including an agent-focused developer environment, the new model claims to be roughly as performant as leading models today, but far faster at up to “4x” the speed of “similarly intelligent models.” For context, xAI’s quick Grok coding model has proved popular. Speed in the developer game is perhaps an under-discussed performance vector.

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What if our planned buildout of new power generation installations is too slow to meet the demands of the present AI buildout? What if we can’t build enough grid capacity to support onboarding those new power sources? What if we run into not an AI data wall, but a lack of power so severe that we can’t turn on as many GPUs and ASICs as we want to crunch AI math?

It would suck. Thankfully, startups are on the case. And I’m not talking about TWiST500 power generation startups like Exowatt or storage solutions like Base Power. Instead, Extropic showed off the fruits of its labor today, including a new “type” of computing gear called the thermodynamic sampling unit, or TSU . Extropic expects the TSU to manage lots more calculation per watt than existing technology. If plans bear out, the TSU could make the coming (current?) domestic energy crunch a thing of the past.

• If you want more on how Extropic’s technology works, check out our chat with co-founder Gill Verdon from this summer.

Thermodynamic sampling is a probabilistic form of computing, which is a great fit for AI today because, Extropic argues, “generative AI algorithms are essentially procedures for sampling from probability distributions.” The two technologies could prove a dynamic duo.

Extropic is not alone in trying to solve or ameliorate one part of the current AI compute crunch. Etched wants to reduce GPU order backlog with transformer-specific chips, for example. But what Extropic has cooked up, per its own claims for now, could shake up how we compute, instead of merely creating a better way to continue computing as we do today.

Much work remains ahead of Extropic, but in terms of seeing a major wager start to pay out, the startup is coming good. — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2200: On our milestone 2,200th episode, Jason and Alex chat with Zach Handshow of SpatialGen about the pressure of giving an Apple keynote and the intense amount of compute required to deliver 16K spatial video to VR headsets. PLUS Raiza Martin of Huxe tells Alex about making AI assistants more personality-driven and less robotic. AND our latest Gamma Pitch from ChessEver, a chess app aiming for serious, elite-level players.

E2199: The Australian government has accused Microsoft of employing a DARK PATTERN, and Jason says sneaky tactics like this just aren’t worth it. PLUS we’re digging into Sequoia’s two NEW funds, with an insider look at what they’re designed to accomplish. AND how Tesla is using synthetic data to train FSD, Mercor’s incredible revenue milestone, do Chinese LLMs have an advantage when it comes to picking stocks(?), and MORE!

E2198: On TWiST, Jason and Alex consider the challenge of 9-9-6, working from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. Is this something founders should genuinely be expected to do in order to win? Is work-life balance a happy fiction? They debate it out. PLUS the latest on the big NBA gambling scandal, Presh Kumar walks us through how to use AI to perfect your launch video, AND Anthropic is buying chips from their AI rival, Google!

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• Perspective AI: Surveys? They never capture what customers are really thinking. That’s why we use Perspective AI. Real insights, straight from your customers. AND the first two months are on us. Just go to getperspective.ai/twist.

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• Crusoe Cloud: Crusoe is the AI factory company. Reliable infrastructure and expert support. Visit crusoe.ai/startup to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today.

Founder U and LAUNCH Accelerator in Japan!

Jason’s coming to Tokyo on Nov 14 to launch a partnership with JETRO — bringing Founder University and Angel University to Japan, and connecting Japanese founders and investors with the global ecosystem. This event kicks off a ten-week program that we're starting in January, all culminating in an Immersion Week and Demo Day in SF. Register here: https://luma.com/cm0x90mk

We’re Hiring a Program Manager!

LAUNCH is seeking a program manager to help organize and manage the Japanese versions of Founder University and Angel University. Candidates must be fluent in both English and Japanese, and should plan on splitting their time between Tokyo and our home base in Austin, Texas. If you’re interested in this exciting opportunity, reach out to [email protected]!

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.

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