Top News
OpenAI may cut AI prices: The WSJ reports that OpenAI is considering “drastically lowering the prices it charges” for using its AI models, potentially opening a new front in its battle with arch-rival Anthropic. The two companies have competed largely on model intelligence and compute availability instead of price; a shakeup in the value of AI tokens could be great news for early adopters, but less welcome to the companies’ backers as both pursue IPOs this year.
The SpaceX IPO is upon us: SpaceX will begin trading tomorrow, kicking off its life as a public company after setting an IPO price of $135 per share, instead of offering a range. As SpaceX is taking a non-traditional approach to listing, we won’t be waiting up late to its listing price; instead, the world will be glued to their screens in the morning to see where the space launch and AI company commences trading.
Agentic trading: Sticking to the trading theme, over on Robinhood, you can bring an agent to the platform via an official MCP server and let it rip. Now, Coinbase is joining in on the fun, adding agentic trading to its platform. Coinbase is not merely fast-following its rival; the crypto giant added agentic wallets earlier this year. If you were trying to work out what the crossover point between AI and crypto was going to be, this may be it.
TWiST 500
What could go wrong with the launch of the world’s new leading AI model? TWiST500 leader Anthropic might have expected a different reaction for its release of Fable 5, the publicly available version of its Mythos model family that it has largely kept under wraps to date. No such luck.
The difference between Mythos 5 (its current iteration) and Fable 5 comes down to guardrails. If you use Fable 5 for cybersecurity or biology-related tasks, there’s a good chance it will balk at doing what you ask of it. This is for safety reasons, per its maker. Carving the AI world into Mythos-haves and Mythos-have-nots is not popular with certain technology figures, and with good reason. AI model releases up to 2026 were largely democratic, with general access granted upon announcement. Everyone (largely) got the same access. Those days are now behind us.
Anthropic took the idea of usage restriction even further, however, building a system into Fable 5 that would quietly degrade itself if it detected the end-user using the model to work on other models (or perhaps even more general ML research). As Anthropic doesn’t allow other labs to use its coding tools to build their own AI models (recall this?), perhaps it felt that this decision wouldn’t raise hackles.
If it did, it was wrong. Tech folks blew their top over the limitations, especially regarding the lack of transparency; who wants to pay top-dollar for a model that may secretly slack off? No one. After the furor, Anthropic backed off on the quiet part of the technical restriction. We’ll see if the move is enough to quiet critics.
They can’t keep getting away with it? Yes, Anthropic can, so long as it remains on top of the global AI game. The same approach probably wouldn’t pass muster if Anthropic were, say, in third. — Alex
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This Week in Startups
E2299: Two days before SpaceX launches the largest IPO in history at a flat $135/share, our VC roundtable drops a scorcher: The top 1% of seed deals might actually be underpriced. Plus: the "Sequoia scam" dual-tranche controversy, tokens-for-equity deals, and whether Claude Fable 5 is a true step function.
Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Michael Downing (Castalia Capital), and Paige Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures) join Alex to go deep on Seed investing, startup economics, AI spend, and the impact of smarter AI on the founder journey.
E2298: Jason goes solo dolo this week, in a blockbuster episode capturing his reaction to the “Bad VC Stories” going around X, the Everything App. Jason recalls some of the high and low points of his career in venture fundraising, including an incredible story about legendary investor John Doerr going the extra mile to attend his Mahalo pitch. PLUS Jason chats with Sue Khim of Brilliant about the education company’s new AI tutor, Koji, and how actually empowering users can help the industry turn around its bad reputation.
E2297: Why does Anthropic want to slow down the development of AI? Aren’t they busy doing just the opposite? And what does Jason think about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal, that the American people should get 50% stakes in all the major AI companies? Is JCal really considering proposals around Universal Basic (or even High) Income policies? We dig into these questions in a news-heavy TWiST. Plus ComfyUI founder Yoland Yan demos the free, open-source platform, which simplifies and fine-tunes text-to-image and text-to-video workflows, and has been used on high-profile projects like the holiday Coca-Cola ads and “Wizard of Oz” at the Vegas Sphere.
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