Streamline Your Newsletter Automation with My New Tool

• If you'd like to receive these newsletters directly in your inbox once a week, hit subscribe and never miss an email!

Upgrade to a premium membership to read today’s full newsletter!

• Premium subscribers include investors and YC-backed founders looking to stay ahead of the latest startup news.

Upgrade to a premium membership to read the rest of today’s newsletter!

Premium subscribers include investors and YC-backed founders looking to stay ahead of the latest startup news.

Share this newsletter with one friend to get access to the Links of the Week section in every newsletter, including today’s! 👇️ 

• I should have known things were too quiet over at ClosedOpenAI. It’s been nearly six months since the great coup and outing then reinstatement of Sam Altman, later revealed to be largely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever who had been concerned over Altman’s ~commercial~ ambitions. It appears that capitalism won again, as Ilya announced he is leaving OpenAI (still no word on what he saw…)

  • This was bound to happen, and frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t announced sooner

  • There was no repairing that relationship after the coup, and the powerful investors of the “non-profit” (namely Microsoft) were going to ensure that Altman was the one running the ship

• Superalignment team lead Jan Leike also penned a thoughtful message voicing his appreciate for the hard work of the team at OpenAI:

• Next on Tech Exec Check, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky announced that he has been fired is resigning

  • AWS’ growth rate slowed from >30% to 12% (this has since risen a bit) under Selipsky

  • New CEO Matt Garman (internal hire) has one goal: catch up to Microsoft and Google in AI. Will he accomplish that? Let’s just say that I’m not holding my breath

• Google announced Veo as it attempts to compete with OpenAI and Sora in AI video generation

  • Videos are 1080 resolution and can be more than a minute long (like Sora)

  • Google also claims that the model can interpret small details and instructions provided in natural language to create unique visuals (like Sora)

  • While the headlines may laud this “innovation,” this is just another example of Google playing catch up, and as with rollouts in the past (see: Gemini), I’m going to have to see this one before I can even call it a competitor…

• The FIT21 bill, which would provide a comprehensive (and clearly defined) plan for regulating digital assets, is likely to be brought to the floor by the end of the month

  • To get it out of the way, it won’t pass

  • However, it’s not for naught (lol) as it’s expected that bringing up the topic now will give proponents some insight into the points of contention from each party and set the stage for legislation to come as the topic becomes mainstream

  • The top minds in crypto are all for it, and if blockchain bros are pro-legislation, it must be good…

• Long live Roaring Kitty. Keith Gill made his return to social media this past week, and immediately, shares of $GME (and by association $AMC) shot up.

  • As of yesterday, shares of both companies slumped, ending hope that this was a repeat of that crazy, crazy month in January 2021

  • If you can make money trading meme stocks, more power to ya. I’d love to fuck over the suits just as much as the next guy, but I also know that given my luck, I’d be the one left holding the bag

  • Reminder to all of you, somebody is always left holding the bag. Collective action is a core tenet of game theory. Take your profit and go home.

Last word 👋