Will's Weekly Roundup

Apr 1st - Apr 7th

"When one door closes, another one opens."

— Boeing

Top stories this week:

  • Google is reportedly weighing an offer to buy HubSpot.

  • Amazon's “just walk out” tech actually relies on 100s of workers in India watching you shop.

  • Destiny Tech100 is the first-every publicly traded fund that lets individuals invest in top private tech companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Instacart.

Headlines

Headlines you missed (or need to see again)...

Twitter has $3B in revenue, 750x more than Trump’s Truth Social.

McKinsey is paying some managers up to 9 months salary to leave. 

Tesla will release its first robotaxi in August.

Apple explores home robotics as its potential next big thing. 

AT&T is investigating a leak that put 7.6M of customers’ data on the dark web. 

Siri will now understand what’s on your screen.

Apple Watch can now detect if you’re drowning and alert others.

Steve Cohen says Point72 can already save $25M by using AI.

Tiger Global raised $2.2B for its latest VC fund, below its $6B target.

Sam Altman no longer owns or controls the OpenAI Startup Fund. 

Biden extended $1.5B to restart a Michigan nuclear plant. 

Microsoft & OpenAI are building a $100 billion data center.

NASA will develop a new time zone for the moon, where time moves slightly quicker.

Cognition Labs, the AI startup backed by Peter Thiel and maker of Devin AI coding copilot, is in talks to raise at a $2B valuation, 6x from its previous valuation.

OpenAI has previewed its Voice Engine, which can clone voices from a 15-second sample.

JPMorgan filed a patent to predict when a “hostile party might take advantage of market climate.”  

Marc Andreessen says detecting deepfakes is not going to work because AI is already too good, so the solution is to certify content as real.

Vision Pro now supports spatial personals in beta.

Microsoft will now sell its Teams app separately from the Office suite.

ChatGPT no longer requires a login to use the chatbot.

Watchlist

Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…

Onego Bio makes animal-free egg whites.

Medcura developed a new solution to control surgical bleeding. 

Home From College connects college students with flexible job and project gigs.

Lockchain is an all-in-one AI tool to manage risk in crypto. 

Alsym developed a non-flammable, high-performance alternative to lithium-ion batteries.  

Ancient Ritual makes high-tech wooden in-house saunas. 

Skyflow created an API-based privacy vault that integrates with any tech stack.

Visuals

Three visuals worth taking a look at...

Outside Interests

Interesting internet finds…

McDonald’s will buy all 225 restaurants from the Israel franchise following pro-Palestinian boycotts.

Chipotle customer shot an employee over a guacamole dispute.

Amazon is trying to get rid of its signature brown boxes. 

CIA director will travel to Cairo on Saturday for hostage deal talks.

Biden is making a 2nd attempt at large-scale student loan forgiveness.

Disney+ will start password sharing crackdown in June.

Meme Cleanser

Weekly Poll

93% of you will still eat Chick-fil-A, despite its decision to no longer offer antibiotic-free chicken.

This Week’s Poll:

Destiny Tech100 is the first-ever PUBLICLY traded fund that lets individual investors own shares of the top 100 venture-backed PRIVATE tech companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Instacart. Would you consider buying the stock? Click the corresponding link to record your answer.

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Newsletter researched/written by Will Sullivan 

and edited by Andrew Coath.