This Week in Startups Sponsors
This Week in Startups has produced 1,457 episodes. 297 of those episodes have been sponsored by 94 companies. We last recorded an episode on Aug 11, 2026.
Latest Episodes
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Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass | E2323
Aug 11, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io NetSuite https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay about the future of AI, and Jason thinks it's his smartest PR move in years. The thinkpiece, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future," arrives alongside a new open-weight Meta model — Muse Glimmer — and the promise of an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 to...
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How AI splits startups into winners and losers | E2322
Aug 7, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield https://lightfield.app Today's show: A hedge fund just blew up shorting SaaS stocks. In turns out, the software companies that went all in on AI are bouncing back. Figma's CEO — still riding high on strong revenue — forfeited roughly $46 million in stock awards to ease investor nerves. Twilio posted its strongest quarter in years. Airbnb's CEO credits AI as the single...
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Airtable's 80% off value crash: VCs explain why it's still a win | E2321
Aug 5, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: *Airtable just sold for $2.25 billion, an 81% drop from its peak of $11.7 billion. On this week's TWiST VC Roundtable, Aditya Agarwal (South Park Commons), Niko Bonatsos (Verdict Capital), and Rick Heitzmann (FirstMark Capital) break down why the venture world sees this as a good outcome, not a financial disaster. By declining the deal, would...
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How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/ Akemi Tsunagawa) | E2320
Aug 3, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Quo https://quo.com/TWiST Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: *Before Bespoke's "travel concierge" chatbot could actually hold a conversation, founder/CEO Akemi Tsunagawa and her team quietly answered customers themselves. That "fake it till you make it" strategy paid off. Bespoke landed Narita Airport as a customer based on the strength of their "chatbot" answers, and now...
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Why AI has no taste and how to fix it (w/ Thais Castello Branco) | E2319
Jul 31, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: AI models can solve PhD-level math equations and code an app in minutes… So why does everything they design look like identical slop? Thais Castello Branco, founder of Taste Labs, raised $18.5M in seed funding to teach frontier models about aesthetics and outputting quality content. She talks to Jason and Lon about why even frontier models...
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Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318
Jul 29, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent- NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/twist Odoo - Odoo.com/twist MongoDB - MongoDB.com/ai Today's show: The FCC's decision to ban Chinese humanoid robots over security concerns is a boon to American startups, which now face a narrower competitive market. But where should we draw the line on security over competition? Menlo Ventures' Deedy Das, Weisburd Pierce's David Weisburd, Plexo Capital's Lo Toney, and LAUNCH's Jason...
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While other cultivated meat companies are collapsing, this one turned a profit | E2317
Jul 27, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Agree https://agree.com Today's show: *Most lab-grown meat companies have already gone under. It's expensive to produce, and there's little demand from real-world consumers. But Tokyo's IntegriCulture is still standing after selling their proprietary serum to cosmetics companies. On Episode 3 of TWiST from Tokyo, Jason sits down with Dr. Yuki Hanyu, an Oxford-trained chemist who started a DIY...
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Why quantum has been "10 years away" for 30 years | E2316
Jul 24, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal Open https://paypalopen.com DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Rippling https://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: *For three decades now, we've been told that breakthroughs in quantum computing are right around the corner. So why hasn't anything materialized? On TWiST in Tokyo, Jason sits down with Yaqumo CEO Kazuhiro Nakashoji and discusses what needed to change (like better algorithms and hardware), and why we may finally be nearing quantum's...
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Why this longevity startup raised in Japan, not Silicon Valley | TWiST Tokyo | E2315
Jul 22, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Agree https://agree.com Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: French ex-martial artist Bilal Kharouni is building his longevity startup from Okinawa, one of the world's "blue zones." (These are regions with the most people living long, healthy lives.) In this TWiST taping from Founder University in Tokyo, Jason investigates why a $200K raise in Japan can out-build a $2M...
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An AI that watches your every click may be the future of work | E2314
Jul 20, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Superhuman https://superhuman.com YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *Cybersecurity has long focused on cleaning up a system AFTER a breach but Ent founder Brandon Dixon says that's backwards. He just raised a $100M seed round to put an AI agent on everyone's company laptops that catches the risky clicks, leaked files, or rogue agents BEFORE they wreck havoc. PLUS Clawra creator David Im return...
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