Who wrote the Book of Molt? (No, really...)

Top News

• Is Moltbook for real?: Humans can’t get enough of Moltbook, the “social network for AI agents” that has captured the public’s imagination. By some accounts, the Reddit platform built just for Moltbot/OpenClaw agents (“moltys,” in the platform’s parlance) is a big step toward the Singularity, with millions of semi-sentient machines scheming amongst themselves and even forming their own religion, Crustafarianism. By other accounts, it’s essentially a big scam: a human-driven project with inflated metrics that’s not actually autonomous. Just a bunch of LLMs that were trained on Reddit doing a solid Reddit impression. Regardless of your specific perspective, it’s undeniable that the project has captured the internet’s attention, and OpenClaw remains at the top of everyone’s tech news feed for at least another week.

• Kushner grabs his Shield: Former White House aide Josh Kushner’s Thrive Holdings has put $100 million into Shield Technology Partners. The roll-up project launched in 2025, with the aim of acquiring takes in IT businesses and using AI tools to make their processes more efficient; Shield will use the new funds to acquire more stakes in new businesses. Their thesis: most enterprises are still approaching AI in a clunky way, as an add-on, pasting a chatbot on the side of a pre-existing workspace. The opportunity comes from considering deeper ways to integrate AI into day-to-day operations, with the ultimate goal of designing and training “a fully-autonomous AI engineer.”

• Your field guide to Fieldguide: Fieldguide, which uses AI to automate some of the duller, data entry-centric auditing and accounting tasks, was actually founded in 2020, before AI tools were already living on everyone’s laptop. They’ve now raised a $25 million funding round with participation from Golden Sachs Alternatives, at a $700 million valuation. Founder Jin Chang told Fortune that he started the company to offset an existential crisis for the accounting industry: not enough young people are studying to become CPAs. Perhaps slick new AI tools that take over the tedious, drudgery-intensive parts of the job can help.

TWiST 500

Two impressive new products from T500 favorites this week:

OpenAI launched a new Mac app for developers using their Codex AI coding agent. According to ZDNet, it’s intended to function as a “command center” for managing multiple coding agents and their long-term projects. CEO Sam Altman explained in a briefing for press that the goal was to overcome limitations in Codex’s standard interface for users working on “extremely complex things.”

Is this an attempt by OpenAI to get in on the OpenClaw Mania currently gripping the tech world? (We’re spending another pod discussing our favorite OpenClaw skills this fine Monday... just saying.) Perhaps! But it’s worth noting that, despite the torrent of lobster-themed hype out there, GPT-5.2-Codex has also been earning lots of fans since launching in December.

Usage has nearly doubled since that time; OpenAI estimates that more than a million developers have used the cutting-edge model, which Altman calls “the fastest adopted model that [the company has] ever made.”

Moving on to xAI — which may soon become part of Tesla and/or SpaceX, if the rumors have it right — launched the latest incarnation of its text-to-photo and video generator, Grok Imagine. The 1.0 version of Imagine can generate 10-second clips in very nearly Blu-Ray quality, at 720p resolution, with improved audio and more expressive voices. xAI also suggests that Imagine has gotten smarter, and better understands user intent from prompts than previous versions.

The Elon Musk project announced Imagine 1.0 in a tweet that also claims the product has generated 1.245 billion videos, just in the last 30 days. Even if you think this stuff is all AI Slop, you have to admit… that’s still an impressive amount of slop. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2242: Another show, another Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw deep dive. In this edition, LAUNCH researchers Oliver Korzen and Lukas Durand join Jason to show off all the ways they’re using Moltys to automate behind-the-scenes tasks for the pod and Jason’s other companies and projects. PLUS investor and entrepreneur Rahul Sood joins us to discuss all the potential security risks associated with OpenClaw and how to keep yourself (roughly) safe.

E2241: It’s our first-ever This Week in Cannabis roundtable, featuring insights from special guests Andrew Duffy (of Sparkplug), Ford Smith (of Ultranative), and Socrates Rosenfeld (of Jane). Together with Jason, they’re talking about the current regulatory environment around cannabis, and how that’s impacting startups… How investors are strategizing around cannabis startup exits… Whether or not cannabis is REALLY that much more potent than your parents’ and grandparents’ stashes… and much more.

E2240: It’s an all-Clawdbot deep dive TWiST. Jason’s back in Austin, and all anyone in American tech can talk about this week is the viral AI assistant, which thousands of developers are already running on newly-purchased dedicated Mac Minis. What is Clawdbot, and how can you put this 24/7 digital employee to work for you? Find out as Jason and Alex talk to the developers and influencers pushing the boundaries of what Clawdbot can accomplish, and writing the skills that are expanding its capabilities in real time.

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