Subscribe now

Hey readers!

Welcome back to your regular tech digest — a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past few weeks.

This edition covers:

• 🗝️ Key trends: UK lands a roster of AI companies

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

and more… let’s dive in.

This edition is brought to you by Deel

The global workforce platform that helps companies hire, manage, and pay talent anywhere. Hire your first international contractor in minutes, or bring on a full-time employee anywhere without opening a local entity. Your team stays focused on building. Deel handles the rest.

Scale your startup faster

🗝️ Key trends: AI startups choose London as their European hub

London’s position as Europe’s AI hub keeps strengthening.

Recently, a new wave of AI startups announced major expansions in the capital — including n8n, ElevenLabs, Lovable, Legora and Cursor — building on earlier moves from OpenAI and Anthropic.

As competition for talent, customers and ecosystem density intensifies, London is increasingly becoming the city where European AI companies choose to scale. With recent political developments in the UK, there is hope that future leadership continues to build on London’s momentum and reinforce its position as Europe’s leading AI hub.

🔍 Top tech news

• SpaceX finally went public!

• YC Spring Demo Day took place last week. If you missed the day, see the full batch here.

💰 Startup funding highlights

• Poland invests $11M into ElevenLabs.

• European startup NEURA Robotics raised $1.4B to develop collaborative robots.

• Odyssey, a world model AI startup founded by self-driving vehicle pioneers raised a $310M Series B round at a $1.45B valuation led by Natural Capital.

• Pramaana Labs raised $27M Seed from Khosla Ventures to bring formal verification to AI.

• Sarvam recently became India’s newest AI unicorn with its latest $234M funding round led by HCLTech.

• NewCore which authenticates, govern, and controls AI agents raised $66M Seed led by Cyberstarts.

• Orbio, automates hiring and onboarding for frontline workers raised $21M Series A led by Dawn Capital.

• Theker raised $85M led by CRV to build the factory robot that doesn’t specialize in anything.

• Trading platform Fomo raised $75M Series B from Index Ventures and USV.

• Voice AI startup Bland raised $50M Series C from Dell Technologies Capital after being rejected by 180 investors.

👀 New VC funds

• The Chainsmokers’ VC Firm Mantis is raising a $100M fund.

• Seedcamp raised $320M for their seventh fund.

• Play Ventures raised $140M to invest in gaming.

• Base10 raised $850M to fund early-stage AI-focused founders.

• Anti Fund closed its oversubscribed $100M Growth I fund.

• CAA, TPG form $250M holding company to acquire businesses led by YouTubers and other creators.

🤝 Acquisitions

• SpaceX to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60B.

• Salesforce acquired Intercom (now branded as Fin) for $3.6B.

• Warner Music acquired AI attribution startup Sureel AI.

• DeepL acquired Mixhalo for live-event audio streaming and translation.

• L’Oreal to acquire majority stake in Indian beauty startup Innovist.

• OpenAI acquired German startup ONA.

• Elastic agrees to buy CRV-backed Deductive AI for up to $85M.

• Databricks acquired cyberattack detection startup Panther.

• AMD buys data center memory optimization startup Mext.

🎤 This week on the NEW ECONOMIES Podcast

Why email never died — and why Superhuman is betting on voice, AI, and the future of work

Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman and now CEO of Superhuman Mail inside the newly formed Superhuman group, joins NEW ECONOMIES on why email remains the most important layer of modern work, how AI is transforming productivity beyond the inbox, and why distribution and focus matter more than technical moats in the age of infinite software.

Previous episodes include:

• Replit's President & Head of AI | Michele Catasta

• Inside Mercury's Founding Story | Co-Founder & CEO Immad Akhund

• Inside Gusto's Founding Story | Co-Founder & CTO Eddie Kim

• We Had to Reimagine Nextdoor | CEO & Co-Founder Nirav Tolia

• 5 Grand Slam Champion Maria Sharapova: Tennis Icon | Entrepreneur | Investor | New Media Creator

• How Many $10 Billion Startups Will There Be? | Eric Hippeau

• Will AI Models Ever Compensate Creators? | Tony Stubblebine

• No More Traditional School Teachers | Joleen Liang

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

Watch and subscribe now!

💰 Special Offers

• With Deel, companies get full coverage across payroll, HR, benefits, mobility, performance, and device management in 150+ countries — with compliance built in. Try it here.

• Hyperagent: Build AI agents super easily. Get $1,000 in free credits here.

• Hostinger: Buy a domain, hosting service or build any website within minutes. Start building with 10% off here.

• Attio: Tired of trying multiple CRM tools? Attio is the favorite, used by thousands of startups. Start using it here.

This digest was human written without the support of AI. If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Why email never died — and why Superhuman is betting on voice, AI, and the future of work

Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman and now CEO of Superhuman Mail inside the newly formed Superhuman group, joins NEW ECONOMIES on why email remains the most important layer of modern work, how AI is transforming productivity beyond the inbox, and why distribution and focus matter more than technical moats in the age of infinite software.

In our latest podcast episode with Rahul, we unpack Superhuman’s eleven-year journey — from the contrarian decision to reinvent email when everyone said it was dead, to building one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic productivity brands and eventually becoming the foundation for a much bigger ambition: the AI-native productivity suite.

We also explore why voice could become the default interface for knowledge work, how AI assistants are becoming a new growth channel for software companies, and why Rahul believes the next generation of winners won’t be defined by who writes the best code — but by who owns distribution, executes relentlessly, and knows what not to build.

If that’s not enough, we go deep on the acquisition story that led Grammarly to rename the entire company around Superhuman, why email continues to outperform every prediction of its demise, and what building the productivity bundle of the future actually looks like.

Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Download the transcript

NEW ECONOMIES Transcript: Rahul Vohra (superhuman)

330KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Timestamps

(0:00) Rahul Vohra
(1:44) Why Go After Disrupting Email
(4:22) Will Email Still Stay Relevant?
(9:20) The Impact of Voice
(14:20) PLG: Sent by Superhuman
(18:57) Why Moats Are Becoming Increasingly Hard to Build
(24:30) How Does Superhuman Group Stay Focused?
(28:55) Inside Superhuman
(33:20) Missing Products from the Bundle
(36:52) The Acquisition
(45:45) Ollie Joining as Chief of Staff
(47:45) Angel Investing

Our notes from this conversation

1. Email is still the most important protocol at work.

Every few years someone declares email dead — and every few years they’re wrong. Email remains identity, authentication, and the default layer for company communication. The interface will change. The infrastructure probably won’t.

2. Voice is becoming the new keyboard.

The breakthrough isn’t transcription — it’s intent. Instead of writing emails, scheduling meetings, and prompting AI manually, people will increasingly speak outcomes and let software execute. Work becomes orchestration.

3. The biggest moats aren’t technical anymore.

Software is becoming cheaper and easier to build. Features get copied faster than ever. Distribution, trust, brand, and knowing exactly what not to build are becoming the new defensibility.

4. Distribution compounds. Products alone don’t.

The winners won’t necessarily be the teams with the smartest models — they’ll be the teams that own attention, create habits, and get embedded where users already work. Distribution has become product.

5. AI changes interfaces before it changes infrastructure.

Voice, agents, and AI-native workflows will reshape how we interact with email, docs, and software — but the systems underneath often survive much longer than people expect.

6. Focus becomes more valuable as building gets easier.

When the cost of creation trends toward zero, restraint becomes leverage. The companies that win won’t build the most — they’ll build the few things that matter.

7. The next growth channel is AI itself.

Users are no longer only discovering products through search, social, or sales. Increasingly, AI assistants recommend, connect, and even activate software on behalf of users. Tools such as The Prompting Company help companies get cited in AI models for example.

8. The future isn’t humans or AI — it’s humans with AI.

The products that endure won’t remove people from work. They’ll amplify judgment, creativity, and decision-making while automation handles the repetitive layers underneath.

Links

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube here.

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Follow Rahul on X (https://x.com/rahulvohra)

Sign up to Superhuman (https://superhuman.com)

Related previous episodes

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

Why I built the coding tool everyone dismissed — then watched it take over the Fortune 500

Michele Catasta, President and Head of AI at Replit, joins NEW ECONOMIES on why vibe coding is no longer just for hobbyists, how Replit went from a side project to having 85% of the Fortune 500 as users, and why 2026 is the year everyone becomes an agent manager.

In our latest podcast episode with Michele, we discuss Replit's origin story — a fifteen-year journey that started as an open source side project in 2011 and spent years building infrastructure in obscurity before the AI unlock that changed everything — and how launching the very first vibe coding agent on the market, before the term even existed, put Replit at the centre of a category it invented.

We also unpack why the SaaS apocalypse is real but overblown, why technical moats don't matter as much as execution moats, and how a crucible encounter with Replit's founder Amjad over a primitive AI demo set the course for what the product would eventually become.

If that’s not enough, we also explore why Replit scrambled an enterprise sales team almost overnight after Fortune 500 IT departments started knocking, the Visa partnership that lets anyone monetize a product they built in a single prompt, and why Michele believes the coding problem is almost solved — and what that means for where Replit goes next.

Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Download the transcript

NEW ECONOMIES Transcript: Michele Catasta (Replit)

310KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Timestamps

(0:00) Michele Catasta
(1:25) The State of AI
(3:25) The Impact of AI Companies Going Public
(6:17) What Michele Is Most Excited About
(8:50) Replit's Founding Story
(18:40) Where Is Vibe Coding Going Next?
(21:00) The Role for PMs Today
(26:07) What Are Agent Managers?
(33:42) Are Technical Moats Relevant?
(36:31) Visa Partnership
(40:05) Ollie Joining as Chief of Staff
(43:48) How to Stay Disciplined
(46:27) Rapid Fire Round

Our notes from this conversation

1. Launch before the category has a name.

Replit shipped a vibe coding agent months before the term even existed. They didn’t wait for validation — they built, launched, and let users define the market. Lesson to founders is to just launch fast.

2. Sometimes being early means writing the playbook, which is totally okay!

Product–market fit as we know can takes ages to figure out. For a decade, Replit looked technically strong but commercially stuck. Those years built the infrastructure and conviction that made the AI moment possible. Remember, successes very rarely happens overnight.

3. Enterprise wasn’t actually a strategy for the team - their users pulled them there.

When employees started building internal tools, IT followed. Strong PLG can create demand before sales does.

4. Technical moats fade. Execution moats compound.

Features can be copied. Judgment can’t. A decade of learning what breaks, scales, and actually matters becomes the real advantage.

5. Coding is becoming the easy part.

The harder problem is everything around it — integrations, payments, governance, and infrastructure. The product becomes the platform.

6. 2026 is the year of ‘’the agent manager.’‘

Work shifts from creating everything yourself to directing, reviewing, and orchestrating multiple agents. The operating model changes before the job titles do.

Links

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES: ‪@NEWECONOMIESPOD‬

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Follow Michele on X (https://x.com/pirroh)

Sign up to Replit: (https://replit.com)

Related previous episodes

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Why I built banking for America's startups — then rebuilt it around AI

Immad Akhund, Co-Founder & CEO at Mercury, joins NEW ECONOMIES on banking one in three U.S. startups, raising $200M without needing a dollar of it, and why the legacy banking system was never going to win.

In this episode, we discuss Mercury’s origin story — launched in 2019 when the entire industry told founders that nobody would trust a startup with their money — and how a million-dollar deposit arrived within four days of launch from someone Immad had never spoken to. We dig into why incumbent banks were always going to lose this fight, why AI makes their position ten times worse, and how Mercury is now rebuilding its entire product around the idea that your bank should live inside whatever AI tool you already use.

We also explore why Immad dropped all one-on-ones after watching Jensen Huang run NVIDIA with 60 direct reports, the Amazon “working backwards” process that mapped out Mercury’s entire AI roadmap from a single doc, and why the fintech companies that planted seeds in 2017 are only now bearing fruit.

Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Download the full transcript:

NEW ECONOMIES Podcast Immad Akhund

306KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Timestamps

(0:00) Immad Akhund
(2:35) Why Raise $200M?
(3:55) Why FinTech Is Having a Moment
(6:02) How Has AI Impacted Mercury?
(10:25) What Is Defensibility Today?
(13:29) Mercury Finding Product-Market Fit
(15:22) Legacy Banks Never Caught Up
(19:22) Inside Mercury's Product Team
(23:56) The Nuclear Power of Talent
(26:05) Is AI Moving Too Fast?
(29:00) Keeping Up-to-Date with AI
(31:20) Ollie Joining Immad as Chief of Staff
(33:45) Our Latest Product Features
(35:45) Immad's Interest in Angel Investing
(38:20) Today's Underappreciated Opportunities
(40:36) AI Wrappers: Will They Last?
(42:34) Why Is Consumer So Hard?
(44:17) Immad's Quick-Fire Round

Our notes from this conversation

1. Raise when you don’t need to — and the terms will show it

Mercury has been profitable for four years. That single fact changed everything about the Series D. When you’re not desperate, you get to choose your investors, your timing, and your narrative. Immad has watched enough founders raise under duress to know the difference — and deliberately built Mercury to a position where fundraising is a strategic move, not a survival one. The best negotiating leverage is not needing the deal.

2. Legacy banks lost because their incentives were always wrong

Deposit banking is a cost center for incumbent banks. Their real product is loans. That single structural fact explains almost everything: why they underinvest in product, why they charge fees instead of building features, why their “engineering” teams are actually IT teams stitching together third-party vendors. They weren’t slow to adapt — they were optimized for something else entirely. Mercury was always competing on a different game board.

3. Trust isn’t a brand asset. It’s an infrastructure layer

Within four days of launch, someone Immad had never spoken to wired a million dollars into a Mercury account. That moment signaled something real — but it took seven more years to get customers holding $400M in their accounts. Trust compounds slowly and is almost impossible to manufacture quickly. It’s also, eventually, one of the most durable moats in financial services. The product is the interface. The trust is the product.

4. AI made the incumbent problem ten times worse

If legacy banks couldn’t keep up with Mercury’s pace over the last decade, they have no chance now. The window for meaningful product decisions has shrunk from years to months. Launching an MCP integration, shipping an AI-native feature, rebuilding a workflow around an agent — these are things Mercury can do in weeks. A bank operating on a core banking vendor’s release cycle cannot. The faster the world moves, the more permanently the gap widens.

5. The paradigm shifts every six months — that’s the feature, not the bug

A year ago, nobody was seriously talking about agents living on your machine and connecting to every service you use. Now it’s Mercury’s central product thesis. Immad isn’t trying to predict which paradigm comes next — he’s building an organisation that can absorb the shift when it arrives. Curiosity and optimism aren’t soft skills. They’re survival mechanisms for operating in an environment where the rules rewrite themselves annually.

Links

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube.

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Follow Immad on X (https://x.com/immad)

Join Mercury (https://mercury.com)

Try Mercury Insights (https://mercury.com/insights)

Our NEW MEDIA Community (new-media.co)

Related previous episodes

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Hey readers!

Welcome back to your regular tech digest — a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past few weeks.

This edition breaks things down into:

• 🗝️ Key trends: The IPO Comeback

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

and more… let’s dive in.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

🗝️ Key trends: The IPO Comeback

After three years of limited activity, the IPO market finally started moving again in 2025. The U.S. saw 347 IPOs, up from 225 the year before and the strongest showing since 2021. The difference this time was investor selectivity. Technology remained the most active sector, but capital largely flowed toward businesses with scale, proven business models, and a clear path to profitability.

Globally, 1,293 IPOs raised $171.8 billion in 2025, a 39% increase in proceeds despite a similar number of listings. More money was raised without a meaningful increase in deal volume, suggesting investors were willing to write larger checks but only for companies they viewed as higher quality.

Attention is now shifting to the next wave of potential listings. Companies such as Anthropic, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Canva remain among the most closely watched IPO candidates, while a broader group of late-stage private companies has spent the last several years strengthening operations and waiting for market conditions to improve. With continued interest in AI and defense technology, and signs of recovery in biotech, the pipeline for the remainder of 2026 appears strong.

🔍 Top tech news

• OpenAI files confidentially for IPO, following Anthropic.

• Italy’s Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO.

• Users took to X this week to express their VC horror stories - see a collection of them here.

• Vlad Yatsenko, CTO and co-founder at Revolut, has stepped down.

• Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky is planning to start a new AI company.

• Supabase, the open-source database of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $500M Series F, valuing the company at $10B.

• Filmmaker Martin Scorsese joined German AI lab Black Forest Labs as an advisor.

• AI music startup Suno raised $400M, at a $5.4B valuation led by Bond.

• Nvidia-backed robotics startup Generalist AI raised $400M led by Radical Ventures, valuing the startup at $2B.

• Lovable is in talks to raise funding at a $12B valuation.

• Fuse Energy just hit $550M in ARR and raised another $30M.

• Factorial raised $150M Series D at a $2.5B valuation.

• Y Combinator’s Spring Demo Day takes place next week. See the latest batch here.

This edition is brought to you by Deel

The global workforce platform that helps companies hire, manage, and pay talent anywhere

Most startups hit the same wall: they find the right person, in a different country, and don’t know how to bring them on without months of legal setup.

With Deel, companies get full coverage across payroll, HR, benefits, mobility, performance, and device management in 150+ countries — with compliance built in.

Hire your first international contractor in minutes, or bring on a full-time employee anywhere without opening a local entity. Your team stays focused on building. Deel handles the rest.

Scale your startup faster

💰 Startup funding highlights

• Legal startup Wordsmith raised $69M Series B to scale legal AI platform for in-house teams.

• Wix CEO backs Willow as the startup raised $7M for an AI agent control layer.

• London’s Airspeed raised $20M Series A to build AI-powered execution layer for revenue teams.

• UK AI startup Scope raised $17.9M led by Index Ventures to speed up industrial inspection workflows.

• AI startup Viktor raised $75M to put a virtual ‘coworker’ in Slack and Teams.

• AI video generation startup TrueFan raised $10M Series A funding.

• Geordie AI raised $30M Series A led by Balderton Capital.

👀 New VC funds

• Benchmark raised $2B for new VC funds.

• Version One Ventures raised $108M as top Canadian seed investor expands globally.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Salesforce acquired Contentful.

• Autodesk acquired MaintainX.

🎤 This week on NEW ECONOMIES Podcast

Eddie Kim, Co-Founder and CTO at Gusto, joins NEW ECONOMIES on cracking the small business market, keeping all three co-founders for 15 years, and why he just built the most important product of his career in eight weeks.

Watch the episode in full now.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• We Had to Reimagine Nextdoor | CEO & Co-Founder Nirav Tolia

• 5 Grand Slam Champion Maria Sharapova: Tennis Icon | Entrepreneur | Investor | New Media Creator

• How Many $10 Billion Startups Will There Be? | Eric Hippeau

• Will AI Models Ever Compensate Creators? | Tony Stubblebine

• No More Traditional School Teachers | Joleen Liang

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

Watch and subscribe now!

Special Offers

• With Deel, companies get full coverage across payroll, HR, benefits, mobility, performance, and device management in 150+ countries — with compliance built in. Try it here.

• Hyperagent: Build AI agents super easily. Get $1,000 in free credits here.

• Hostinger: Buy a domain, hosting service or build any website within minutes. Start building with 10% off here.

• Attio: Tired of trying multiple CRM tools? Attio is the favorite, used by thousands of startups. Start using it here.

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

Why I built America's most-loved payroll company then reinvented it with AI

Eddie Kim, Co-Founder and CTO at Gusto, joins NEW ECONOMIES on cracking the small business market, keeping all three co-founders for 15 years, and why he just built the most important product of his career in eight weeks.

Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Download the full transcript:

NEW ECONOMIES Podcast: Eddie Kim

314KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Eddie Kim is the co-founder at Gusto, the small business platform that just crossed a billion dollars in annual revenue serving over 500,000 companies across payroll, benefits, HR, and compliance.

A two-time YC founder who met his co-founders at Stanford and at a half marathon starting line, Eddie has spent 15 years proving that the most unglamorous problems in business are often the most valuable ones to solve. In this episode, we explore what it actually takes to build a category-defining company in a space nobody wanted to touch — and why Eddie believes he just built the most important product of his career — Gusto Cofounder: The AI Teammate Built for Small Business.

We also explore the blank canvas problem holding AI back from mainstream adoption, why the distinction between engineer and designer is disappearing, and how a team of five people went from zero code to full launch in eight weeks.

Timestamps

(0:00) Eddie Kim, Co-Founder at Gusto
(5:40) Lessons from Y Combinator
(9:30) 15+ years on co-founder relationships
(15:00) How to give feedback to your co-founders
(17:45) The early days at Gusto
(21:10) Gusto’s new product: Gusto Cofounder
(33:05) How to launch new features
(38:15) The rise of solo entrepreneurs
(41:25) How to avoid distractions
(45:20) How Gusto would launch today from scratch
(47:00) Lightning fire round

Our notes from this conversation

1. Boring problems are the best problems — if you can stomach the grind

In 2011, the hottest companies were chasing eyeballs. Mobile, social, local. Nobody wanted to work on payroll. Hiring was nearly impossible, and one of the category’s own pioneers told the Gusto founders to their faces: don’t do it. That discouragement was actually the signal. The problems everyone avoids are exactly the ones worth solving — because if you can crack them, the competitive field is almost empty.

2. The co-founder relationship is built over years, not conversations

All three Gusto co-founders are still at the company 15 years later — a genuinely rare thing. What makes it work isn’t a communication framework or a weekly check-in cadence. It’s shared values, accumulated trust, and the quiet confidence that comes from having survived a hundred disagreements and come out the other side. Real directness — saying what you actually think — only becomes possible once you’ve built that foundation. You can’t shortcut it.

3. The blank canvas problem is AI’s biggest obstacle

The reason most small business owners can’t harness AI isn’t capability — it’s context. Install Claude Code or open a frontier model and you’re staring at infinite possibility with no clear starting point. That’s paralyzing. The insight behind Gusto Co-Founder is that AI becomes transformative the moment it’s anchored to a specific domain, with real data and real problems already loaded in. Generic intelligence is a tool. Contextual intelligence is a co-founder.

4. Trust is infrastructure — and it takes 15 years to build

Gusto couldn’t have launched its AI co-founder product on day one. The depth in payroll, benefits, compliance, and tax took over a decade to accumulate. That history — 500,000+ customers, millions of data points on what makes small businesses succeed or fail — is what makes the product genuinely useful rather than just technically impressive. The lesson: trust and data are compounding assets. The longer you stay focused on one problem, the harder your moat becomes to replicate.

5. The future of building is builders — not roles

The team that built Gusto Co-Founder was five people: four engineers and a designer. No roadmaps, no sprint planning, no documentation. The designer wrote code. The engineers made design decisions. They ran a permanent Zoom call instead of meetings. In eight weeks, they went from zero to launch. That’s not a fluke — it’s a preview. AI is erasing the gaps between specialties. The builder mindset is the only identity that matters now.

Links

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES (‪‪@NEWECONOMIESPOD‬)

Discover Gusto CoFounder (https://gusto.com/company-news/cofounder)

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Follow Eddie on X (https://x.com/edawerd)

Our NEW MEDIA Community (new-media.co)

Related previous episodes

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

Why I Returned As CEO After 5 Years Away

Nirav Tolia, Co-Founder & CEO at Nextdoor, joins NEW ECONOMIES on the company's founding story, why Nirav came back as CEO and the impact of community in the midst of AI.

Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Download the full transcript:

NEW ECONOMIES Transcript

337KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and CEO at Nextdoor, the neighborhood network connecting over 110 million people across communities worldwide. Having built and sold Shopping.com to eBay, returned to lead Nextdoor through a major transformation, and served as a guest shark on Shark Tank, Nirav is one of Silicon Valley’s most seasoned operators. In this episode, we explore what it takes to rebuild a company from the inside — and why the hardest thing in tech isn’t starting, it’s coming back.

We discuss Nextdoor’s origin story, born from the ashes of a failed startup called Fanbase, and the crucible moment that gave Nirav the courage to keep going. We dig into what it really feels like to return as founder-CEO after five and a half years away, why incumbency is often the straightest path to irrelevance, and how Nextdoor is repositioning itself for what Nirav calls the age of human connection — where AI reduces friction but real neighbors remain irreplaceable. We also explore the future of local community, the untapped potential of 110 million sign-ups, and the lessons Nirav has taken from working alongside legendary investor and mentor Bill Gurley for over two decades.

Timestamps

(0:00) Nirav Tolia, Co-Founder & CEO at Nextdoor
(2:05) A Multi-year Turnaround
(4:20) Crucible Moments That Led to 20+ Million Weekly Active Users
(9:25) How to Fight Through Difficult Days
(13:20) A Blossoming Co-founding Relationship
(17:37) Stepping Away, Then Coming Back as CEO
(24:40) The Third Act: An AI-Enabled Version
(29:50) The Age of Human Connection
(36:30) Building to Stay Relevant
(44:30) Will Nextdoor Win In This Market?
(52:15) Rapid Fire Round

Our notes from this conversation

1. The Crucible Moment Is About Daily Survival, Not Long-Term Vision

The romanticized version of founding a company — the carefully considered spreadsheet, the bold strategic plan — is a myth constructed in retrospect. In the moment, it’s pure survival. Nextdoor was born from the ashes of a failed company called Fanbase, with co-founders who gave themselves one last summer to find something that worked. Having the courage to keep going when things are at their darkest is what separates founders who break through from those who don’t.

2. The Only Tolerable Way Through the Entrepreneurial Journey Is With Other People

Nirav credits community — specifically his co-founder Sarah Leary, who he’s worked alongside for 27 years — as the through line of everything. Great co-founders aren’t just talented; they’re people you like, respect, and trust in equal measure. You need someone who can crack a joke at the right moment, solve an impossible problem the next, and stay when everyone else heads for the exits. That combination is extraordinarily rare, and when you find it, you don’t let go.

3. Coming Back as CEO Is Harder Than Starting From Scratch

Returning founders face a unique psychological challenge: the temptation to restore what once was. Nirav was clear from day one that the answer was never to go back. The company he left in 2018 was different from the one he rejoined in 2023, and the company that needs to be built now is different again. The only useful frame when returning is phase three — learning from both prior chapters, but building something genuinely new.

4. Incumbency Is the Straightest Path to Irrelevance

The story of the tech industry is one company eating another in a cycle of creative destruction. Standing still is effectively moving backwards. Nextdoor’s next phase required asking honestly: what still matters to people today, and what doesn’t? The shift from “what happened last weekend in my neighborhood” to “what’s happening this weekend” is deceptively simple but fundamentally changes the product — moving from objective information to subjective, human recommendation, which is something an LLM will never do as well as a neighbor.

5. The Age of Human Connection Is Not in Competition With AI — It Requires It

The false choice between AI efficiency and human authenticity is one of the most important things Nirav pushes back on. The birth of the internet was the age of information. The emergence of AI is the age of intelligence. What comes next is the age of human connection — and AI’s role is to reduce the friction that stops people from finding each other, not to replace the connection itself. Nextdoor’s early decision to require real names and verified addresses, made long before AI was a concern, turns out to be one of its most valuable assets in a world where trust and identity are everything.

6. Bill Gurley’s Lesson: Whatever You’ve Achieved, 10x It

No matter where Nextdoor reached, Bill Gurley’s consistent challenge was to multiply it. Not iterate — multiply by 10x. That relentless expansion of what’s possible, held by someone who simultaneously believes you’re capable of it, is the rarest and most valuable thing an investor can offer a founder. It’s not just high expectations. It’s high expectations paired with genuine faith.

Related previous episodes

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

Y Combinator’s Spring ‘26 Demo Day is two weeks away. We’re back with a full overview of the latest startups in the batch — what they’re building, which categories they’re focused on, and which partners coached them. We’ll also highlight the most exciting startups to watch and take a closer look at the teams behind them.

So what have we learned about this batch so far?

• 62% of the batch is made up of B2B startups, with many founders building across product infrastructure, tools for product leaders, engineers and operators. 64% of startups were building across B2B in the previous batch.

• Legal tech: We noticed far fewer legal tech startups in this batch than the last — just two compared to seven previously. This may be an early sign that the category is becoming overcrowded, with dominant players like Harvey and YC unicorn Legora leading the market.

• 12% of the startups are building across Industrials with a particular focus on Robotics.

• Defense is becoming a major trend.

• Healthcare stayed flat but is overwhelmingly AI-for-clinicians / ops, not biotech.

Let’s explore the latest trends shaping this batch in full and how markets are shifting.

This edition is brought to you by Deel

The global workforce platform that helps companies hire, manage, and pay talent anywhere

Most startups hit the same wall: they find the right person, in a different country, and don’t know how to bring them on without months of legal setup.

With Deel, companies get full coverage across payroll, HR, benefits, mobility, performance, and device management in 150+ countries — with compliance built in.

Hire your first international contractor in minutes, or bring on a full-time employee anywhere without opening a local entity. Your team stays focused on building. Deel handles the rest.

Scale your startup faster

The History of YC

In under two weeks, over 190 startups from the latest Y Combinator batch will present to investors at the Spring ‘26 Demo Day, and this may be the strongest batch yet. After meeting several founders in recent weeks, one trend is very clear: the founders are doubling down on AI, focusing on B2B — the same trend as the last couple of batches.

Ask any founder or investor, and they have undoubtedly heard of Y Combinator — one of the world’s most renowned startup accelerators, with a mighty track record. Founders who raise from them are 45% more likely to raise a Series A and the accelerator turned 20 years old last year. Throughout that time, they have achieved some incredible stats, including:

• $1.2T+ in combined market value has been created.

• 6.5% of YC startups become unicorns.

• A quarter of all YC-backed unicorns achieve a valuation of over $10 billion.

All within just 20 years. So with the latest batch wrapping up, many of these startups are poised to rise — let’s meet them!

Trends from this batch

We’ve spent the last few weeks analyzing the latest batch in full and this is what we are seeing:

19% of startups in this batch are solo-founder companies

Nearly one in five companies has a single founder, and the median core founding team is just three people. Solo founder examples include:

• Drip: The operating system for enterprise deal execution.

• Lattice Health: The operating system for clinical AI in imaging.

• OpenProse: A natural language agent framework: write the future into existence.

• RentAHuman: Marketplace for AI agents to hire humans.

• Smol Machines: Ship software faster with portable, self-contained virtual machines.

The rise of AI agents

60% of startup one-liners mention AI or agents. They’re not shipping features anymore — they’re shipping coworkers, and the tools those coworkers need. Examples include:

• Dayjob: AI Agents for industrial logistics.

• Replicas: Background coding agents for engineering teams.

• AgentPhone: Phone numbers for AI agents.

• Callab: AI voice agents for legacy telephony systems.

• Userlens: AI agents that predict churn months before it happens.

Is Healthcare finally having the breakthroughs it needs?

We now have access to healthcare tools that were previously unavailable or prohibitively expensive, at a fraction of the cost before the AI boom. The developments are striking: AI-powered primary care physicians, barrier-free cancer screening, and other tools that dramatically expand access to care. Examples include:

• Clara is building the AI primary care doctor.

• Adialante: Cancer screening without barriers.

• Lumius: Fast, smart, accessible 3D ultrasound for everyone.

Defense tech is fully back

For years, building weapons was off-limits for Silicon Valley founders. That taboo has collapsed. Examples include:

• Tenet Industries: Low-cost, mass-produced strike drones.

• Maquoketa Research: The intelligence layer for one-way attack drones.

• AICE Power: Submarine drones for defense.

• Arlo Industries: Passive aerial sensing mesh to track drones and missiles.

The hiring stack flips — agents that hire, and get hired

Recruiting is being rebuilt by AI — and in the batch’s strangest twist, the agents are now the ones doing the hiring. Examples include:

• Asendia AI: AI Recruiters for staffing agencies and enterprise.

• Prism: AI-native recruiting agency.

• Standout: Agentic hiring marketplace.

• Ontora: AI agents that interview every employee to map how work gets done.

• RentAHuman: Marketplace for AI agents to hire humans.

Wall Street in a box — autonomous capital markets

The ~$30K-a-year Bloomberg terminal, the analyst and the trader — collapsed into a single agent. One founder even pitched a hedge fund where the AI makes every trade. Examples include:

• Standard Signal: Hedge fund where AI researches and executes every trade.

• Cohesion: Your public equities agentic teammate.

• WithAI: Custom command centers for hedge funds.

• Wealor: AI-native platform for wealth managers.

Meet the Spring ‘26 Batch

With a lot of eyes on YC companies, we wanted to showcase them through a wider infographic to help you navigate the areas that most interest you.

So, let’s dive in!

Meet the 190+ startups from YC’s latest batch who are building across the following categories:

• B2B startups (110+)

• Industrials (20+)

• FinTech (15+)

• Consumer (10+)

• Healthcare (15+)

• Real Estate & Construction (3)

and more…

Explore all 190+ startups in the batch.

Share

You can discover the batch in full on our interactive market map which includes

• Information about each company.

• Select startups by YC partner

• *Insights on each startup, including the trends shaping the category they’re building in.

Explore all 190+ startups in the batch.

Discover previous batches

Special Offers

• With Deel, companies get full coverage across payroll, HR, benefits, mobility, performance, and device management in 150+ countries — with compliance built in. Try it here.

• Hyperagent: Build AI agents super easily. Get $1,000 in free credits here.

• Hostinger: Buy a domain, hosting service or build any website within minutes. Start building with 10% off here.

• Attio: Tired of trying multiple CRM tools? Attio is the favorite, used by thousands of startups. Start using it here.

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

The teams to watch right now have one thing in common: they’re running on Attio. Just connect your email and Attio instantly enriches your data, maps your pipeline, and surfaces complete context on every deal and customer. It’s the favorite CRM out there.

Try it now

Hey readers!

Welcome back to your regular tech digest — a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past few weeks.

This edition breaks things down into:

• 🗝️ Key trends: AI Micro-Dramas

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

and more… let’s dive in.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

🗝️ Key trends: AI Micro-Dramas

There’s been a frenzy on X this past week around AI micro-dramas — short-form, AI-generated stories built purely for entertainment. These dramas are already massive in China and are now gaining traction in Western markets.

One viral example this week was a post about Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, developing feelings for someone he meets at Stanford. It’s already pulled in millions of views.

If this trend continues, it won’t replace Netflix or creators — it’ll simply become another layer of entertainment we consume.

Watch the Anthropic drama and join the discussion on the latest trend.

🔍 Top tech news

Layoffs are happening rapidly! Meta just laid off 8,000 employees, Wix, ClickUp, and Cloudflare are also announcing major layoffs. Additional layoffs come from the likes of Webflow, Groupon, Intuit, Cisco, and ZoomInfo — all of which have taken place in the past few weeks.

In other news:

• Anthropic raised $65B in Series H funding at a $965B post-money valuation, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia ahead of its IPO.

• SpaceX is due to go public in the coming weeks!

• South Korean chip giant, SK Hynix joined the $1 trillion market cap club.

• Cognition raised $1B at a $26B valuation.

• Oura unveiled its Ring 5 with a thinner, lighter design starting at $399.

• Ferrari launched its first EV.

💰 Startup funding highlights

• Insurance startup Corgi raised another $106M at a $2.6B valuation since announcing their last round three weeks ago.

• Glean surpassed $300M ARR, just five months after crossing $200M and growing ~3x over the past 15 months.

• Amazon fulfillment competitor Stord raised $250M at a $3B valuation.

• Triomics raised $22M to bring oncology-specific AI to cancer centers.

• Stilta raised $10.5M from a16z and YC to help companies rediscover the patents they forgot they had.

• Marketing operating system Nectar Social raised $30M Series A led by Menlo Ventures.

• Health companion Lucis raised $20M Series A led by General Catalyst.

• Legal AI startup Lexroom raised $50M Series B led by Left Lane Capital.

• Upskilling talent platform Multiverse, founded by Euan Blair, raised $70M Series E.

👀 New VC funds

• Convective Capital raised an $85M fund to build disaster resilience

• Meridian Ventures launched a $35M fund with a focus on MBA-deferred founders

• A*, founded by Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, just closed its third fund with $450M.

• European fund byFounders raised an oversubscribed €130m+ Fund III.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Lyft to acquire UK-based black cab app Gett.

• Anthropic acquired Stainless.

• Mistral acquired Emmi AI.

• Asana acquired StackAI.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Maria Sharapova - Tennis Icon: From 800 matches, 36 singles titles, and 5 Grand Slams to entrepreneur, investor, and now media creator.

Watch the episode in full now.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Will AI Models Ever Compensate Creators? | Tony Stubblebine

• No More Traditional School Teachers | Joleen Liang

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

Watch and subscribe now!

🗓️ Previous insights

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Maria Sharapova is one of the greatest sporting icons of our time, having played over 800 matches, won 36 singles titles, and claimed 5 Grand Slams. Since retiring from the sport, she has become an entrepreneur, investor, and more recently, the host of her podcast Pretty Tough.

In this episode, we explore what it takes to reach the top of your game in sport and why athletes should always be planning for their second act after retirement. We discuss some of Maria’s most iconic championship moments and which fellow tennis icon she has the most respect for.

We also explore NEW MEDIA — the latest buzzy tech trend changing how we consume news and information, and who we get it from. Reflecting on our thoughts about the new media landscape, we discuss the impact of AI, how to become a great storyteller, and why creators could become the next generation of reporters at sporting press conferences.

This was a very special episode, enjoy!

Timestamps

(0:00) Intro
(3:19) Maria's Proudest Moment
(4:45) Preparing for a Match
(10:34) How to Find Balance
(12:18) The Business of Sport
(14:16) Having Dad as a Coach
(17:32) Preparing for Retirement
(20:40) How to Reinvent Yourself
(25:40) New Media: Maria's New Podcast
(35:30) Maria's Take on AI
(39:55) Is Legacy Media Fading?
(44:15) Reflecting on Maria's Career
(48:15) Our Pretty Tough Questions

Links

Subscribe to Pretty Tough (https://www.youtube.com/@mariasharapova)

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES (https://www.youtube.com/@NEWECONOMIESPOD)

Follow Maria on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mariasharapova/)

Follow Maria on X (https://x.com/MariaSharapova)

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Recently published editions relevant to new media

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions.

Subscribe now

There’s a new shift quietly reshaping Silicon Valley — and suddenly, everyone is paying attention.

It’s called new media.

As legacy media continues to decline, more people are turning to trusted creators for news and insights. What once felt niche is quickly becoming mainstream, with hundreds of independent creators already shaping the next era of media.

A few weeks ago, we published The New Media Landscape, mapping the creators and channels reshaping how people consume information online.

The response made one thing clear: audiences are increasingly moving away from traditional media brands and toward independent creators.

The shift is already starting to show up in the data. According to recent traffic rankings, Substack ranked among the top 10 most visited news and media platforms in April, ahead of NBC.

If the term “new media” is new to you, it’s not actually a new concept. Some would say it’s simply the latest term for the creator economy — and that’s probably the most accurate way to think about it. However, following OpenAI’s recent acquisition of the technology show TBPN, the category is clearly having a moment as seen in our viral post.

So why is new media having so much momentum right now? There are a few reasons:

• AI slop is everywhere. In a recent podcast episode with Medium CEO, Tony Stubblebine, we discussed what AI-generated content actually means for the future of the internet. Will it eventually fade out? Everyone will have their own opinion, but the new media channels that survive will likely be the ones focused on taste: content that is either timely or timeless. We may also see a trend where timeless content goes private as we discussed in the episode.

• Our attention spans are becoming shorter, faster than ever, forcing platforms to constantly reinvent how they capture — and keep — people’s attention. Some of us rely on AI models for answers, while others increasingly turn to independent creators they trust.

• Tech companies are no longer using traditional Google and social ads as much as they don’t move the needle enough anymore. Instead, they are partnering with creators to better position them as market leaders.

Discover the latest new media channels across technology and where this category is heading.

Share

The NEW MEDIA Tools Landscape

Following the release of The NEW MEDIA Landscape, today we’re publishing the tooling landscape: the platforms helping new media creators do what they do best — creating content and building their businesses.

To make the map easier to navigate, we’ve categorized the tools into the following areas:

• Ads: Design ads within a few clicks.

• AI / Agentic Video: Edit and create videos with AI.

• AI Content Detection: Identify whether content has been AI-generated.

• AI Studios: Studios creating videos and films using AI.

• Build AI Agents: Build and deploy AI agents.

• Build Apps & Websites: Create apps and websites within minutes.

• Cited by AI Models: Help brands and creators get cited by AI models.

• Clipping: Tools for clipping and repurposing content.

• Community: Platforms for building communities.

• CRM: Manage contacts and relationships in one place.

• Design: Create graphics and visual assets.

• Dubbing: Translate content into multiple languages.

• Editing: Edit videos, photos and clips.

• Engage with Fans: Find new ways to connect with audiences.

• Fans Supporting Creators: Monetize through memberships, tipping and one-off events.

• Financing: Banking and fundraising.

• Grow on YouTube: Tools designed to help creators grow on YouTube.

• Legal: Manage contracts and legal workflows.

• Link In Bio: Keep all your links in one place.

• Live Streaming: Stream across multiple platforms.

• Music: Royalty-free music for content creators.

• Newsletters: Platforms for publishing written content.

• Podcasting: Tools built for podcasters.

• Presentations: Create presentations using AI.

• Productivity: Tools designed to improve workflows and efficiency.

• Research: AI models and tools that support research.

• Social Platforms: The social platforms we use daily.

• Talent: Hire creators and talent.

Discover the tools in full here.

Share

If you don’t see your tool listed, you can add it here.

(Once added, it will automatically appear on the marketplace).

Recently published editions relevant to new media

Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES to stay ahead of the latest technology news & trends.

Subscribe now

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Hey listeners,

If you work in tech, you’ve probably heard of Eric Hippeau, co-founder of Lerer Hippeau Ventures, one of the most prominent venture firms focused on the NYC startup ecosystem. With decades of experience in venture capital, Eric joins us to help unpack where we are in the new AI era, and where things may be headed next.

Throughout this episode, we discuss what the current state of AI means for startup valuations, how many $10B+ companies this wave could create, what it really means to take a company public and whether it’s still the right path for founders, and how venture firms can continue to stay relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. Finally, as the former CEO of The Huffington Post - one of the most influential digital media publications of its time - Eric shares his words of wisdom on the future of news, creators, and how we consume information online.

In this episode, we cover:

How Eric thinks about physical AI: Why the best startups won’t just be thin wrappers around existing models.

Why today’s startup market feels disconnected: With mega-funds, inflated seed rounds, and fewer realistic paths to liquidity.

What happened to journalism online: From building The Huffington Post to navigating today’s fragmented media environment. How is the new media landscape being shaped?

Venture capital is changing: Why solo GPs may struggle to compete against larger firms over the next decade.

Could AI reshape healthcare: Especially across diagnostics, primary care, and lowering the cost of basic medical services.

Anthropic tools like Claude are changing internal workflows: Why some firms are rebuilding around AI from the ground up.

AR glasses may deserve another look: Why lightweight wearables could succeed where bulky headsets failed.

The best founders treat startups like a marathon: How long-term thinking helps companies survive difficult markets and failed bets.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Chapters in this episode:

(0:00) Why the Tech Market Feels Broken Right Now
(4:45) The Biggest Tech Trends Everyone’s Watching
(10:30) The New North Star for Startups
(14:20) The Hidden Cost of Overvalued Startups
(21:00) Why Companies Still Go Public
(24:00) Why AI Could Create Massive New Wealth
(26:40) How VCs Are Fighting to Stay Relevant
(32:20) The Biggest Mistakes Solo GPs Make
(33:56) How New Media Changed Everything
(43:30) Building The Huffington Post
(49:10) Can Creators Build Billion-Dollar Companies?
(53:00) Rapid Fire Questions

Stay in touch

Follow Eric on X (https://x.com/erichippeau)

Visit Lerer Hippeau (https://lererhippeau.com)

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

The teams moving fastest right now all seem to share one thing: they’re running on Attio. Just connect your email and Attio automatically enriches your data, organizes your pipeline, and gives your team complete context on every customer and deal. Built for modern GTM teams that want to move faster. Try it now.

Hey readers!

Welcome back to your regular digest - a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past few weeks.

Here’s what we’re covering this week:

• 🗝️ Key trends: We’re at the end of The Creator Economy as we know it

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

and more… let’s dive in.

Subscribe to avoid missing future editions.

Subscribe now

🗝️ We’re at the end of The Creator Economy as we know it

AI slop is everywhere. Content is becoming either timely or timeless. Does timeless content eventually become private? What does that mean for media? And what role does the creator play in it?

We are entering a new era for creators: The New Media Economy.

Attention. Distribution. Power. Taste.

Creators are going direct.

They are gatekeeping their premium content.

They are using community and distribution as a moat.

This is not just happening to creators, it’s also happening to many tech companies.

They are hiring new types of roles: Heads of New Media, Heads of Storytelling, Chief Narrative Officers, Chief Clipping Officers, and Heads of Media Attention.

To help us understand where this category is going (and to help us understand what NEW MEDIA actually is), we want to introduce you to someone.

Recently, we sat down with Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine, who shared the moments that led us to where we are today, where we’re going next, and the magical journey of becoming a successful new media creator in today’s era. We also talked about:

1. AI is making writing more generic. Creators are taking their premium content private. What should creators be thinking about?

2. Will AI models compensate creators? If not, what does this mean for creators who decide to take their content private?

3. AI models need ongoing access to the latest high-quality information. If the public internet turns to slop, there is no value. What does this mean going forward?

4. Medium’s incredible journey: from losing $2.5M a month to becoming a titan of the new media economy. Tony shares how he turned the struggling company around and where it stands today.

Watch the episode in full now.

🔍 Top tech news

• Kalshi, the prediction market startup raised $1B Series F led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Paradigm.

• ElevenLabs crossed $500M ARR.

• OpenAI closed The Deployment Company, a $10B enterprise AI bet on private equity.

• Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100M Series B at a $2B valuation led by Sequoia.

• Ineffable Intelligence, a British AI lab founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, raised $1.1B led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Sierra raised $950M from Google Ventures, and Tiger Global Management.

• Legora raised an additional $50M from Nvidia as part of their $550M Series D funding round.

• GameStop offered $56B to acquire eBay.

• Lovable introduced an automatic 10% salary increase for each employee on their work anniversary.

💰 Startup funding highlights

Series B

• Business insurance startup Corgi hits $1.3B valuation after raising $160M Series B led by TCV.

• Sereact, a robotics company that automates the pick-and-pack processes for warehouses, raised $110M from Headline and others.

• Avoca, which uses AI agents to handle inbound and outbound sales raised, $125M from General Catalyst, Meritech Capital Partners, and others.

• Actively, a booking assistant for your favorite fitness classes & wellness experiences, raised $45M from First Harmonic, TCV, and others.

Series A

• Scout AI which develops artificial intelligence systems for defense robotics, raised $110M from Align Ventures, Draper Associates, and others.

• Oolka which helps users understand, monitor, and improve their credit scores with ease, raised $15.5M from Accel and others.

• Manifest OS, which powers AI-native law firms, raised $60M from Menlo Ventures and others.

• Fun develops payment infrastructure designed for web3 and digital asset transactions raised $72M from Multicoin Capital, SignalFire, and others.

Seed

• Pit, founded by the team behind Swedish mobility startup Voi, raised $16M to build AI that learns your workflows — and builds them for you.

• Altara which bridges the data gap slowing down physical sciences, raised $7M led by Greylock.

👀 New VC funds

• Founders Fund raised $6B for fund four.

• Andreessen Horowitz raised $2.2B for its crypto fund.

• 137 Ventures raised $700M for two growth-stage funds.

• BMW i Ventures raised $300M for new fund.

• Ground State Ventures, raised over $88.5M for a quantum tech fund.

• Haun Ventures raised $1B for new fund.

• Mother Ventures closed $10 million in commitments.

• Refactor Capital raised $50M for fund five.

• Wisdom Ventures raised $77.7M for fund one.

• Arāya Sie Fund raised $10M first close for women-led startups.

• Former Andreessen Horowitz Partner, Sumeet Singh launched Worldbuild with a $30M debut fund.

• Earlybird closed $423M fund to back Europe’s early-stage founders.

• Airwallex founder Jack Zhang launched Latitude 37 - supporting the next generation of Australian founders.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Recharge acquired Y Combinator portfolio company Skio for $105M cash.

• Meta acquired robotics startup, Assured Robot Intelligence to bolster its humanoid AI ambitions.

• Nebius acquired US AI inference startup Eigen AI in $643M deal.

• Thumbtack acquired StreetFair.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Our latest podcast episode: We Ignored Silicon Valley Advice for 3 Years.

Attio founder, Nicolas Sharp joins us to discuss the decision to build in stealth for 3 years.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Will AI Models Ever Compensate Creators? | Tony Stubblebine

• Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Still Betting Big On Crypto | Ali Yahya

• No More Traditional School Teachers | Joleen Liang

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

Watch and subscribe now!

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Hey Readers

If you work in tech, you’ve probably heard the term “new media” — a new wave of the creator economy where creators are becoming the preferred distribution channels for brands and businesses.

To better understand new media, the creator economy, and what the future of writing actually looks like, I spoke with Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, to unpack what’s really happening.

We also talked about Medium’s own journey. As many of you know, the company has faced its share of challenges: losing $2.5M a month at its peak, paying back $37M in overdue loans, making painful layoffs during COVID, and facing the enormous task of turning the business around.

In this episode, we explore

• The $2.5M Monthly Leak: How Tony restructured a “toxic” financial situation and turned a struggling unicorn profitable in under two years.

• The Death of Free Traffic: Why the era of “free customers” from Google is ending and how to pivot your business model before it’s too late.

• The “Barbell Effect” in Content: Why the middle class of creators is disappearing while AI slop and high-end human expertise move to opposite ends of the spectrum.

• The Rise of Private Walled Gardens: Why the best writers are moving their content into private groups to protect their IP from AI scrapers.

• AI as a Productivity “Power-Up”: Why writing is currently one year behind programming in the AI-adoption curve - and how to use it to 10x your output without losing your soul.

• The Expert Economy vs. The Creator Economy: Why “living a life” is the only defensible moat left in a world of instant AI generation.

• The New Rules of Distribution: How to build a “timeless” media brand that survives AI summaries and thrives in a world of subscription fatigue.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

In this episode, we unpack:

(0:00) Intro
(2:10) What is New Media?
(5:20) What is good content today?
(8:37) How did we end up here as creators?
(12:25) Medium’s founding story
(19:25) Medium’s lowest era
(27:40) Tony’ toughest moments as CEO
(31:25) Should creators be concerned about AI?
(41:00) Will LLMs compensate creators?
(46:12) Is The Creator Economy dead?
(51:50) Medium’s next 12 months

Links mentioned in this episode:

NEW MEDIA (www.new-media.co)

Medium (www.medium.com)

Books:
1. How to win friends and influence people
2. The First 90 days

Content pieces:
1. Want to Raise Venture Capital More Easily? Clean Up Your Own Shite First

2. Fell in a hole, got out

TK App (https://medium.com/tk)

Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)

Follow Tony on X (https://x.com/tonystubblebine)

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

As we know, the CRM landscape is undergoing a huge transformation — with incumbents such as Salesforce being slow to move and innovate, newer players are entering the arena, moving faster with better innovation.

To help us understand how legacy software is being forced to evolve, Nicolas Sharp, founder of Attio joins us on the podcast and shares his perspective on what it actually takes to build an “AI-native” business in a market dominated by slow-moving incumbents.

In this episode, we explore

• Why Attio spent 1,000 days in the lab perfecting its architecture while the rest of the world chased “ship-fast” agility.

• Why Attio embedded AI across its products to stay ahead of the curve.

• The playbook for deploying agents and AI features at scale when you serve thousands of customers.

• Attio raised $52M last year — Nick explains how fundraising has evolved in the post-AI era.

• The shrinking “half-life” of product-market fit in a world of rapid model iteration.

• How to build a world-class team with high ambition while giving people the autonomy to thrive.

• Why Europe is having a breakout moment — producing more unicorns and emerging as a global AI hub.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Chapters in this episode

(0:00) Building in stealth for 1,000 days
(10:10) Attio was built to be AI-native before it was the default
(15:40) How does distribution effectively work when deploying AI agents?
(22:40) What is product market fit today?
(25:18) How to stay relevant
(30:35) The biggest change when fundraising today
(32:40) How to stay up to date with AI trends
(35:20) How teams operate today looks very different vs before
(38:20) Attio's culture
(41:50) Why Europe is having its moment
(45:40) Attio's ambitious 12 month plan
(48:25) Who will build the next Slack?
(49:00) Quick fire questions

Discover previous episodes and stay ahead of the latest trends

Explore all past episodes on your favorite podcast apps, including:

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

and more…

Watch and subscribe now!

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

The teams to watch right now have one thing in common: they’re running on Attio. Just connect your email and Attio instantly enriches your data, maps your pipeline, and surfaces complete context on every deal and customer. Try it now!

Hey readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick snapshot of the most important tech news from the past week.

This edition breaks things down into:

• 🗝️ Key trends: The New Media Landscape

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

and more… let’s dive in.

🗝️ Key trends: The New Media Landscape

Attention. Distribution. Power. Taste.

This is how the future of media will be built.

Creators can now build media brands and reach millions faster than ever before — without the overhead, gatekeepers, or massive teams that defined previous generations of media.

What used to take institutions now takes consistency, distribution, and a strong point of view.

And we’re seeing it happen everywhere.

Journalists are going independent.
Creators are becoming media companies.
Brands are building in-house media teams to stay relevant.
Content is becoming either timely or timeless.

As this landscape evolves, so will the next generation of media teams, which may have a mix of these roles:

1. Head of New Media

2. Head of Community

3. Head of Storytelling

4. Chief Clipping Officer

5. Chief Narrative Architect

6. Chief Distribution Officer

7. Director of Content Performance

8. Chief Retention Officer

9. Head of Brand Partnerships

10. Head of Events

To help you discover the creators driving this trend, we’ve just mapped 340+ emerging media channels shaping how people consume news, startups, technology, business, and culture.

If you’re a creator looking to learn, a brand looking to partner, or just curious where media is heading next — explore the full landscape at new-media.co.

Subscribe now

🔍 Top tech news

• OpenAI releases GPT-5.5, bringing the company one step closer to an AI ‘super app.’

• Anthropic reached a trillion-dollar valuation on the secondary markets.

• Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO from Apple.

• China blocked $2B Meta takeover of AI agent developer Manus.

• Bob Iger rejoins Thrive Capital as advisor after Disney exit.

• Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta has launched his latest venture: Abundance.

💰 Startup funding highlights

Discover the latest funding rounds which have taken place over the past week, by funding stage:

Series C rounds

• Cloudsmith, an artifact management platform designed to control, secure, and distribute software packages and containers, raised $72M led by TCV.

• Kashable, a fintech platform that provides employees with access to socially responsible credit and financial wellness, raised $60M led by Goldman Sachs.

Series B rounds

• Buzzy, the video editing agent, raised $20M led by Redpoint.

• Comfy, a startup that helps creators control image, video, and audio outputs from diffusion models, raised $30M.

• AcuityMD, a medtech intelligence platform that leverages AI and precise data to support commercial decision-making, raised $80M from the likes of ICONIQ and Benchmark.

• SereactAI, the robotic brain that anticipates outcomes before it moves, raised $110M led by Headline.

Series A rounds

• Oolka, a digital platform designed to help users understand, monitor, and improve their credit score, raised $14.1M led by Accel.

• Mosaic, a software that specializes in digital deal modeling platforms, raised $18.4M led by Radical Ventures.

• Monk, which automates invoice follow-ups and collections to help businesses improve cash flow and efficiency, raised $25M led by Acrew Capital and Footwork.

Seed rounds

• Coral, which designs custom automations for healthcare providers, raised $12.5M led by Lightspeed and Z47.

• Petual, which automates SOX testing with precision at scale, raised $20M led by Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital.

• Grai, the AI music research company, raised $9M led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo.

👀 New VC funds

• USVC launched “A single basket of high-growth venture capital, for everyone.”

• Haystack announced new funds.

• A new fund called AI Health Fund has emerged.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Sierra acquired Fragment.

• Cohere acquired LLM company, Aleph Alpha.

• Legora acquired Swedish startup Qura.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Our latest podcast episode: Is crypto actually still exciting? Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Ali Yahya joins us to discuss where crypto is heading next.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• No More Traditional School Teachers | Joleen Liang

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

Watch and subscribe now!

Subscribe to never miss a future episode.

Subscribe now

As we know, crypto is evolving daily - right alongside AI. We wanted to get to the bottom of where these two fast-moving sectors are truly intersecting, so we sat down with Ali Yahya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). With a background as an engineer at Google Brain before his move into venture capital, Ali has a front-row seat to this ‘relentless exponential’ growth and a unique perspective on how these two worlds are merging.

In this episode, we explore: Why the definition of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has shifted from a sci-fi benchmark to a tangible economic goal; how a16z’s massive “platform” team of experts is rewriting the rules of venture capital; and why privacy is becoming the ultimate defensive “moat” for the next generation of crypto startups.

We also dive into the ‘agentic economy’ - a future where your AI agent evolves from a simple assistant into a sophisticated tool that can automate workflows and interact with the digital world. We challenge the popular narrative around agents holding their own crypto wallets and discuss why the reality of agentic commerce will likely look quite different. Plus, Ali shares why, if he were starting his career today, he would bet everything on the next great frontier: ‘physical intelligence’ in robotics.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Chapters in this episode

(0:00) How far we have come
(4:10) What does AGI actually mean?
(5:30) Inside Andreessen’s crypto fund
(9:00) The impact of platform teams inside venture firms
(12:00) Should we still be excited about crypto?
(14:30) Why did NFTs not work?
(19:00) Is privacy the new moat?
(23:45) Where do startups go wrong within privacy?
(26:30) Will AI agents ever transact on our behalf?
(31:35) How long until AGI is fully adopted?
(34:00) Is moving too quickly a distraction?
(35:00) How has fundraising changed for founders?
(37:20) The types of roles that are changing
(41:25) Prediction markets
(44:45) Startup ideas!

Stay ahead of the latest trends: Watch all previous episodes

Watch all previous episodes now on your favorite podcast apps. Episodes include:

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

and more…

Watch and subscribe now!

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick, curated snapshot of the most important startup and tech signals from the past week.

This edition breaks things down into:

• 🗝️ Key trends

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe now

🗝️ Key trends

We’re entering the Clipping Economy.

In a world where attention is fragmented, long-form content (podcasts, interviews, webinars) is just raw material. Distribution is driven by moments, not episodes.

The highest-leverage marketer in 2027 won’t be the one who creates the most content - but the one who identifies the 47-second clip inside a 2-hour podcast that generates 10M views.

That skill isn’t editing - it’s pattern recognition:

• emotional spikes

• contrarian soundbites

• algorithm-friendly pacing

We’ll likely see a new role emerge: Chief Clipping Officer.

Because in the new media landscape, discovery doesn’t come from publishing - it comes from precision extraction.

🔍 Top tech news

• Anthropic launches Claude Design, a new product for creating quick visuals.

• Months-old startup Recursive Superintelligence raised $500M for self-teaching AI - the round was led by GV.

• Slash, a Ramp competitor founded by teenagers, raised $100M at $1.4B valuation.

• Canva debuts a new suite of agentic tools, as the design app quietly becomes one of the world’s most used AI services. Read more here.

• OpenAI and Anthropic are both doubling down on their London offices. Anthropic plans to grow headcount from 200 to 800 alone in London.

• UK startups raised 41% of all European VC in Q1.

Share

💰 Startup funding highlights

• Slate Auto raised $650M to build affordable modular electric pickup trucks.

• Plata raised $405M, reaching a $5B valuation, becoming a leading digital bank in its region.

• Mintlify raised $45M Series B (a16z, Salesforce Ventures) to build AI-era knowledge infrastructure.

• Loop raised $95M Series C to scale logistics payments infrastructure.

• Resolve AI raised $40M Series A extension to automate software operations and incident management.

• Auctor raised $20M Series A to unify pre-sales and software implementation workflows.

• Spektr raised $20M Series A for regulatory onboarding and compliance automation.

• Solidroad raised $25M Series A to modernize enterprise hiring and onboarding with AI.

• Atlas raised $40M Series C at a $420M valuation for its invite-only charge card platform.

• Zenskar raised $15M Series A for AI-native revenue automation.

• Joyful Health raised $17M Series A to improve healthcare revenue recovery systems.

• Alloy Therapeutics raised $40M Series E to expand its biologics drug discovery platform.

• Hightouch hit $100M ARR, driven by AI-powered marketing infrastructure.

👀 New VC funds

• Sequoia Capital raised $7B expansion fund to back AI startups.

• Accel raised $5B to back late-stage bets.

• Sovereign AI, the UK Government’s new £500m ($675M) venture fund has officially launched.

🤝 Acquisitions

• OpenAI acquired personal AI finance startup Hiro.

• Monarch Tractor’s collapse ends with an acquisition by Caterpillar.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Our latest podcast episode: Imagine walking into a classroom where there are no traditional teachers - just tablets, robots, and human instructors guiding every lesson. That future isn’t hypothetical. It’s already here. Discover the latest trends shaping the education system here.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

Watch and subscribe now!

Share NEW ECONOMIES

Brought to you by Attio

The teams to watch right now have one thing in common: they’re running on Attio. Just connect your email and Attio instantly enriches your data, maps your pipeline, and surfaces complete context on every deal and customer.

This is our go-to CRM tool and we love it! Try it now!

Try Attio for free

Subscribe now

Hey listeners,

Imagine walking into a classroom where there are no traditional teachers - just tablets, robots, and human instructors guiding every lesson.

That future isn’t hypothetical. It’s already here.

Today’s guest on the podcast is Joleen Liang, co-founder of Squirrel AI, an education startup from China that’s already teaching thousands of students without any form of traditional teachers present. With over 20 billion data points informing its system, the company is pushing the boundaries of personalized learning. They’re building toward a future with teacher robots, preparing for a public listing, and already generating hundreds of millions in revenue.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Takeaways from this episode

• The Autonomous Engine: Joleen explains why Squirrel AI isn’t just a chatbot, but a “virtual super-teacher” capable of handling 100% of knowledge transfer, moving toward a future of fully self-directed, teacher-less instruction.

• The “LAM vs. LLM” Edge: Why generic AI models are insufficient for education; Joleen breaks down their proprietary Learning Analysis Model (LAM) that analyzes 20 billion data points to diagnose why a student is stuck rather than just giving them the answer.

• The “Double Reduction” Resurrection: A raw look at the 2021 Chinese regulatory shift that sent revenue to zero overnight from hundreds of millions of dollars, and how Squirrel AI pivoted from software-only to a hardware-integrated “Smart Tablet” powerhouse to survive.

• The “Data Analyst” Instructor: How the role of the teacher is being permanently re-coded - shifting from a lecturer to a “psychologist and data scientist” who only intervenes when the AI triggers an alarm on a student’s frustration levels.

• The “Equity for Debt” Gambit: The incredible story of how 80% of their franchisees, facing a total market collapse, chose to convert their debt into company stock because they believed in the AI’s results more than the immediate cash.

• The “Multimodal” Mirror: A deep dive into the use of eye-gazing, facial expression tracking, and “mistake reasoning” to create a learning profile so specific it can predict a student’s mastery better than a human tutor ever could.

• The “Modern Discipline” Divide: Joleen discusses the cultural friction of expanding into the US, comparing the disciplined learning habits of Asian markets with the need for high-engagement, hyper-interesting content to keep Western students focused.

In this episode, we cover:

(0:00) AI is replacing school teachers
(1:45) Why is edTech having its moment?
(4:20) What do parents actually think about AI?
(7:00) Do we REALLY need to spend 20+ years in school today?
(9:50) How do students actually use AI inside the classroom?
(12:45) Can Squirrel be globally adopted outside of China?
(20:00) How China tracked students’ performance
(25:45) The terrifying moment in 2021
(35:30) How to disagree with your team
(39:50) Why IPO vs. private?
(41:20) Where to expand next?
(42:15) Our next five years
(45:00) One lesson you teach other founders

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick roundup of the latest tech news to keep you updated.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week - organized into the following categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

📊 Read of the week: The Dawn of NEW MEDIA

TBPN, the popular daily tech news show, was recently acquired by OpenAI for over $100M. What does this signal about where the media industry is heading? Are we on the brink of a wave of similar acquisitions this year? And if so, who might be next?

Was this a meaningful acquisition for OpenAI, and how might the show change now that it sits under one of the most powerful AI companies in the world? A few thoughts:

• The acquisition is a relatively small line item for OpenAI, given its scale and revenue. From a balance sheet perspective, it’s unlikely to make any difference.

• But strategically, it’s far more interesting. OpenAI’s brand and scrutiny will only intensify. Owning a trusted media platform within Silicon Valley’s most influential tech circles could help shape the narrative, clarify messaging, and build goodwill.

• There’s an open question about editorial independence. It’s likely that direct competitors to OpenAI will be less inclined to appear as guests. That said, the show’s live format, where guests speak candidly without heavy editing, remains a strong advantage and could continue to attract high-quality voices.

• TBPN was reportedly on track to generate ~$30M in revenue this year, supported by a consistent roster of sponsors featured prominently in its ticker. Those sponsors have now been removed, signaling a shift in monetization strategy and, for the founders, a very solid exit.

Zooming out, this deal points to a broader trend: distribution is a moat. If you own attention, you shape the conversation and increasingly, that may be just as valuable as the technology itself.

NEW ECONOMIES recently published two pieces on this growing trend: directing attention through new media - specifically the rising influence of technology podcasts and the surge in popularity of Substack newsletters. You can discover hundreds of new media creators here.

🔍 Top tech news

• OpenAI acquired the new media channel TBPN for $100M+.

• Oracle is cutting up to 30,000 employees - 18% of their workforce, to pay for AI data centers.

• NASA Artemis II splashes down in the Pacific Ocean in a ‘perfect’ landing for Moon mission.

💰 Startup funding news

• SiFive, a semiconductor company that delivers scalable processor core IP solutions, raised $400M Series G led by Atreides Management.

• Avec, a Tinder-style email app that allows you to swipe through your inbox, raised $8.4M from Lightspeed and Haystack.

• Chapter, which offers a Medicare navigation platform that provides advisory services for seniors seeking health coverage, raised $100M Series E led by Generation Investment Management.

• Conductor, which enables you to run a team of coding agents on your Mac, raised $22M Series A led by Matrix.

• Haast, provides an AI-powered platform that automates marketing and content compliance workflows, raised $12M Series A led by Peak XV Partners.

• Crosby, an AI-powered legal services company that accelerates contract review and negotiation processes, raised $60M Series B led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital.

• Manna Air Delivery, which provides drone delivery as a service stack to restaurant chains, dark kitchens, and online food delivery platforms, raised $50M Series B led by ARK Investment Management, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, and Schooner Capital.

• Luminai, which automates workflows by taking any multi-click process and making it one click, raised $38M Series B led by Peak XV Partners.

• Patlytics, provides AI-driven patent intelligence solutions to enhance research and efficiency, raised $40M Series B led by Signalfire.

• Insight Health, a clinical AI agent platform that automates patient communication and clinical documentation for medical practices, raised $11M Series A led by Standard Capital.

• Nas.io, helps anyone go from idea to revenue in 1 minute with AI, raised $27M Series A led by Khosla Ventures.

• Linx Security, provides an AI-powered platform for identity security, governance, and administration, raised $50M Series B led by Insight Partners.

• Juno, offers automation for modern tax firms, focusing on research, preparation, review, and advisory services, raised $12M Seed led by Bonfire Ventures.

👀 New VC funds

• Collide Capital raised $95M fund II to back fintech, future-of-work startups.

• Eclipse raised a $1.3B new fund.

• Gateway Capital announced first close of $25M Fund II.

• Eka Ventures raised $107M Fund II.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Anthropic acquired AI startup Coefficient Bio for $400M.

• Canva acquired Simtheory and Ortto.

• Savvy Games acquired Mobile Legends developer Moonton for $6B.

• Unilever acquired vitamin gummies brand Grüns in wellness push.

• HubSpot acquired Futurepedia.

• SAP acquired Reltio.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Yahoo CEO Takes Us Inside The Comeback | Jim Lanzone.

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!