This Week in Startups Sponsors
This Week in Startups has produced 1,426 episodes. 297 of those episodes have been sponsored by 94 companies. We last recorded an episode on May 23, 2026.
Latest Episodes
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From hypercars to cruise missiles: Lukas Czinger on the future of US defense | E2292
May 23, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Every.io https://every.ioShopify https://shopify.com/twistRender https://render.com/twistPlaud https://Plaud.ai/twistToday’s show:Startups like Divergent Technologies are producing components and aircraft for the military through new systems that are better, faster, and cheaper than conventional methods. CEO and co-founder Lukas Czinger stops by TWiST to share the company’s vertically integrated, AI-driven manufacturing platform and how he...
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Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291
May 20, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twistLinkedIn - https://linkedIn.com/twistNorthwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twistPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Why raise $200 million if you are already profitable? That’s the question Jason and Alex put to Mercury’s founder and CEO, Immad Akhund, after the entrepreneur raised another massive round for his upstart, technology-friendly bank. TWiST then welcomed Kled founder...
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Why is Gen Z hates AI?
May 18, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Vanta - Vanta.com/TWISTSentry - Sentry.io/TWISTDeel - Deel.com/TWISTToday’s show:AI is the villain of the 2026 commencement cycle, with business luminaries — including Eric Schmidt — booed for discussing or praising the technology. As students graduate into a job market forcibly reshaped by AI, increasingly negative public polling on the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on society is clearly not missing the mark.Jason and Alex then...
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The Self-Driving Startup Nobody Saw Coming | E2289
May 15, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:IM8 Health: IM8health.com/TWISTSquarespace: Squarespace.com/TWISTRender - Render.com/TWISTSelf-driving just stopped being a science problem and became an engineering challenge instead. That's the through-line of today’s double-header with the CEOs of two of the most important AV companies in the world — Wayve's Alex Kendall and Waabi's Raquel Urtasun. Between them: ~$2B raised in the last six months, Uber as a partner, Nissan and Volvo as OEMs, and a...
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How the 1% Will Own Compute (and What It Means for You)
May 13, 2026The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space).Thank you to our exclusive...
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How Many Startups Will Survive OpenAI? | E2288
May 13, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Pilot - https://Pilot.com/TWISTGrasshopper Bank - https://Grasshopper.bank/TWISTQuo - https://Quo.com/TWiSTPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistAnthropic just declared every unauthorized secondary sale of its stock "void" — naming Hiive, Forge, Sydecar, Upmarket, and others in a public hit list. Jason and Alex sit down with Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures), Dave McClure (Practical VC), and Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures) to unpack what the AI lab’s...
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Cerebras's IPO goes vertical, and the death of OpenClaw? | E2287
May 11, 2026Today’s show:Cerebras just jacked its IPO range to $150–$160 a share, OpenAI bought a consulting firm to seed its $4 billion private-equity joint venture, and a startup in Oakland is electrolyzing magnesium out of seawater for one-third the going price. Alex Wilhelm and Jason Calacanis go deep with AI21 co-CEO Ori Goshen on why model orchestration, not bigger LLMs, will decide who wins enterprise AI.The crew also covered the decline of OpenClaw, TikTok's new £3.99 ad-free tier, more entries...
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5,000+ Tech Workers Laid Off This Week. It's Just The Beginning. | E2286
May 9, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:IM8 Health - https://IM8health.com/TWISTEvery - Every.ioSentry - https://Sentry.io/TWISTBanks don’t want to hand over their data to AI labs. So David Moscatelli built a $250,000 box that runs AI on-prem. He already has 1,600 pre-orders. On today’s episode of TWiST, Jason and Alex sit down with the Go Abacus founder and Yanez's Jose Caldera to unpack how regulated industries are getting AI without the cloud, why Bittensor subnet 54 is incentivizing...
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The end of Venture Capital? (VC Roundtable) | E2285
May 6, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twistPaperOS - https://paperos.com/twistLinkedIn Jobs - https://linkedIn.com/twistPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistThe top 5 U.S. venture firms captured 73% of all LP commits in Q1, and three veteran VCs say the math may have officially broken. Aleph's Michael Eisenberg argues we may be witnessing the end of a 60-year run for venture capital as a craft business. Maniv's Mike Granoff and Oxcart's Larry Covert...
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Naval's GP, Ankur Nagpal, Breaks Down The Viral “USVC” Fund | E2284
May 5, 2026This Week In Startups is made possible by:Render - render.com/twistVanta - vanta.com/twistNorthwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twistHave you wanted to invest in venture capital alongside your 401k contributions, but struggled to find a way to place a bet? Search no more, for the AngelList team has created USVC, a new fund that will accept investments of as little as $500 from folks who lack accreditation. USVC’s Ankur Napgal swung by the show to chat about investment...
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