Top News
OpenAI filed for an IPO: The New York Times confirms that OpenAI has confidentially filed to go public with the SEC, and that it could become “one of the largest public offerings” in Wall Street history. (The confidential part means that, while documents have been submitted, the information contained therein is not yet public.) No firm schedule has yet been set for the hotly-anticipated IPO, though in a terse statement, the company noted “it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company.” Private markets have set the ChatGPT maker’s value at around $730 billion, not including its most recent $122 billion fundraise. (By comparison, OAI’s 2025 revenue was just over $13 billion.) Of course, we’re also awaiting IPOs from TWiST 500 darlings SpaceX and Anthropic.
Karp’s frontier lab complaints: The Palantir CEO appeared on CNBC this week, and claims that it’s not just the general public that’s angry about AI. He argues enterprise clients are also “unhappy” with the perspective and business practices of the largest frontier AI labs. Karp accuses the Anthropics and OpenAIs of the world of focusing purely on “tokenmaxxing” — convincing users to burn compute on increasingly large-scale, and costly, multi-agent projects — rather than delivering top quality models and results. Karp further suggests that, while LLMs are “crucial,” the real value accumulating over the next decade will come from the implementation layer, not the models themselves.
Tether backs Neura Robotics: The German startup is currently developing the 4NE1 humanoid robot, with plans for both industrial and domestic applications. They already have a transport-bot for factories and a robotic arm for helping out around the home, so it seems the new project will blend together everything they’ve learned to date. The company raised a massive $1.4 billion Series C round, which includes investment from stablecoin issuer Tether, along with chipmakers Qualcomm and Nvidia, Amazon, and auto supplier Schaeffler AG, valuing Neura at $7 billion total (according to Bloomberg). The company plans to use the new funds to continue developing the 4NE1 and other humanoid robots, along with expanding and fine-tuning their manufacturing infrastructure and software platform.
TWiST 500
A few big stories from the world of prediction markets, concerning Kalshi, Polymarket, and a few other T500 companies of note.
First up, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — the federal agency that oversees prediction markets — proposed a new set of (somewhat vague!) regulations for the popular sites. The CFTC now reserves the right to block specific wagers that it deems outside public interest, or markets that are “highly susceptible to manipulation.” (Wall Street Journal suggests this would include any outcomes that could be strongly influenced by just one person.)
The rule would likely block the most controversial kinds of wagers, such as bets around potential wars or assassinations. It’s also likely that some kinds of sports wagers would be impacted, such as bets around specific players getting injured or the kinds of minutiae that could lead to incidents of “spot-fixing.”
Meanwhile, in an effort to specifically crack down on market manipulation and “insider trading,” Kalshi announced plans to require participants in certain wagers to disclose their employers. This change will roll out over the next few weeks. The disclosures only apply to certain kinds of “sensitive” markets. For example, if you want to wager on a specific corporation’s performance, Kalshi wants to make sure you can’t access early and/or confidential information. Those war or national security-related wagers, if they’re still permitted by the CFTC at all, will also likely require employment disclosure moving forward.
Here’s the catch: WSJ reports that Kalshi won’t take steps to verify the employment information provided by users until a wager is otherwise flagged for suspicious activity. So it seems like insider trading is still theoretically possible, so long as the bettor carefully covers their tracks and doesn’t make it too obvious. – Lon
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This Week in Startups
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.
E2296: Want to get to space? Several launch companies can help you. SpaceX, Rocket Lab, the Russians, the list goes on. But what about once you make it upstairs, then what? Impulse Space CEO and CTO Tom Mueller is building the next stage of our orbital economy. Meanwhile, venture capitalists are enamored with the idea of humanoid robots — robots share our shape, our work environment, and even our tools. But startups like Dusty Robotics are taking a different tack; instead of building human-shaped robots, it’s building more specialized ‘bots. Dusty’s CEO, Dr. Tessa Lau, joins Alex to go deep on purpose-built robots in today’s build-crazy market.
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