3297625
A hub for startup news, trends, and insights, covering the global startup ecosystem for founders, investors, and innovators. Community: @startupdis Buy Ads: @strategy (this is our only account).
📊 Reddit chart shows AI replacement fear rising over time at one FAANG
A post on Reddit claims the author polled coworkers at a tech giant every 6 months about whether AI will replace their job.
In the chart, green is “not worried at all.”
Red is “very worried, it could replace me today.”
Across the dates shown, the green share falls while the orange and red shares grow.
By the latest poll, the chart is dominated by worry.
📊 @tech
🚀 Real-time LinkedIn API at enterprise scale
✔️ EnrichGraph gives B2B teams API access to public LinkedIn-sourced professional and company data without scraping or fighting platform limits.
❌LinkedIn does not offer a usable public API. Scraping breaks at scale, gets accounts banned, and creates fragile pipelines.
⭕️ EnrichGraph replaces all of that with infrastructure built for production.
Used by teams building sales enrichment, recruiting platforms, and market intelligence tools.
Common use cases
🔸 Job change detection and alerts
🔸 Recruiting and talent platforms
🔸 Sales and lead enrichment
🔸 Market intelligence and BI
Designed for scale, not shortcuts.Читать полностью…
The only major tech billionaires who weren’t named in the Epstein files
✔️ Subscribe on @venture
🔭 Vaonis launches a $99,000 telescope controlled from a smartphone
Vaonis has unveiled Hyperia, a smart observatory priced at $99,000. The system was originally built for the Palais de la Découverte in Paris before moving into a commercial release.
Hyperia uses Canon optics with a 150 mm refractor and a 1050 mm focal length. Inside is a 45 MP full-frame Canon sensor, comparable to EOS R5 II class cameras. A 17-lens system reduces reflections and supports long exposure imaging.
The structure stands about 1.8 m tall and weighs up to 75 kg. It can stay outdoors for up to 5 years without a dome or servicing. The system compensates for Earth’s rotation by rotating the sensor, enabling exposures of up to 30 minutes.
Everything runs through a mobile app. Users select targets, schedule observations across nights, process images, and stream live output to classrooms or planetariums.
Preorders opened in January. Deliveries are planned for 2027.
📊 @tech
🎬 xAI launches Grok Imagine API for video generation
xAI has launched the Grok Imagine API. It is a video and audio generative model. The release was announced on xAI’s official X account.
Grok Imagine can animate images, generate scenes from text prompts, and refine longer cinematic sequences. The model is offered through xAI’s video API.
xAI positions this as a high performance API built for video workloads. The focus is on turning text or images into finished video output.
The launch puts xAI directly into the video generation model category.
https://x.ai/news/grok-imagine-api
📊 @tech
🤖 Elon Musk says Tesla will start selling humanoid robots by end of next year
Elon Musk said Tesla plans to begin robot sales by the end of next year and stressed the timeline is firm. According to him, the humanoids already handle simple tasks at factories.
The robots are positioned for basic work and household routines like cleaning. Musk described their scope broadly, saying users will be able to ask them to do almost any task.
A test production line is already running at Tesla’s Fremont factory. Pricing is still not final, though earlier estimates were around $20,000 per unit.
📊 @tech
🔐 Samsung adds pixel level privacy to block shoulder surfing
Samsung announced a new privacy layer for Galaxy smartphones designed to stop people from reading screens from the side. The feature works at the pixel level, dimming or hiding parts of the display for off angle viewers.
The system combines hardware and software. From the side, the screen can appear dark or partially obscured, while staying fully visible head on. Samsung says development took over 5 years, based on how people use phones and what they consider private.
The feature can be enabled per app, such as banking, or only during password entry or notifications. Visibility levels are adjustable, with an option to turn it off.
Timing and supported models are still unspecified.
Samsung says it is coming soon.
📊 @tech
📊 Claude lands inside Microsoft Excel for Pro users
Anthropic has встроила Claude directly into Microsoft Excel. The integration lets users work with data through plain tasks instead of writing formulas.
You can ask things like grouping customers by LTV and purchase frequency. Claude analyzes the table and returns results inside Excel. It also generates formulas for a given task, explains how they work, checks existing formulas for errors, builds pivot tables, compares periods, and flags trends or outliers.
The shift moves Excel from manual logic to intent based analysis. For Pro users, spreadsheets become a conversational interface rather than a syntax problem.
📊 @tech
🤖 ClawdBot trades stocks and crypto to pay for an RTX 4090
A user shared a case where ClawdBot suggested buying an RTX 4090 to improve performance. Instead of buying the GPU, the user set up Claude to trade stocks and crypto around the clock.
The system runs continuously and executes trades without manual input. The stated goal is to earn enough to cover the hardware cost.
The setup turns a performance request into an automated income loop.
📊 @tech
📱 Apple plans a cheaper iPhone 17e at $499
Apple is preparing its lowest priced iPhone yet. The iPhone 17e is expected in the first half of 2026 with a price around $499.
🔸 Rumors point to a 6.1 inch OLED display with 60 Hz, Dynamic Island, and the new A19 chip. The processor is expected to match the base iPhone 17.
🔸 The focus is on essentials rather than extras. Hardware choices suggest cost control without splitting the core platform.
This would place Apple deeper into the mid range price segment.
📊 @tech
💡 Giant Bic pen turns into a room light
🔸 Seletti unveiled a 1.8 m lighting fixture shaped like the Bic Cristal pen at Maison&Objet in Paris. The project marks 75 years of the iconic pen. The lamp uses a 12:1 scale and replaces the ink tube with a 2,400 lumen LED.
🔸 The design keeps the original form. A transparent body, a colored cap, and the familiar proportions are all preserved. Materials were chosen to closely match the real pen.
🔸 The lamp can hang from the ceiling, mount on a wall, or stand vertically as a floor light. Its size makes flexibility necessary rather than optional.
Bic Lamp is set to launch in the US later this year at $350.
📊 @tech
Remember when Mark Zuckerberg took humanity's toughest CAPTCHA test? 😂
📊 @tech
What a bio-hacker's home actually looks like
📊 @tech
⭕️ AI neck wearable restores speech after stroke
Researchers at University of Cambridge developed Revoice, a soft fabric choker that helps people with dysarthria speak again without surgery. The device reads throat muscle signals and converts silent speech into fluent sentences in real time.
How it works:
🔸 Textile strain sensors capture muscle vibrations in the neck
🔸 One AI model decodes silently mouthed words
🔸 A second model infers emotional tone from pulse signals
🔸 Output speech is reconstructed with context and emotion
In tests on 5 post-stroke patients, word error rate was 4.2% and sentence error rate 2.9%. Users reported a 55% increase in communication satisfaction. Unlike earlier systems, Revoice adds no delay between words.
The results were published in Nature Communications. Larger clinical trials are still needed, but the approach could extend to Parkinson’s disease and motor neuron disorders.
📊 @tech
🎮 LingBot-World releases as open source alternative to Genie 3
A Chinese team released LingBot-World in open source days after Google launched Genie 3. The system is built on Wan 2.2 and targets the same idea of interactive video worlds.
It runs at 720p and 16 fps with under 1 second latency. Simulations can last up to 10 minutes.
The model generates interactive environments that stay consistent over time and can be controlled in real time. It is designed for continuous interaction rather than short clips.
Under the hood is a MoE setup with two 14B experts tuned for different noise levels. Only one expert is active at a time.
Training moved from a pretrained Wan 2.2 to long action controlled videos, then to distillation into fast autoregressive diffusion for real time use. This setup is not meant for consumer hardware.
The technical report is detailed. A public demo is still pending.
📊 @tech
🚀 AI plans a Mars rover route for the first time
On December 8, a Mars rover followed a route generated by AI for the first time in history. The test came from a collaboration between Anthropic and NASA.
Claude was loaded with years of rover context. This included telemetry, command formats, safety limits, orbital images, terrain models, and hazard data. The agent planned the path iteratively in 10 m segments.
The final route was reviewed by humans and tested in simulation. NASA says only minor adjustments were needed. Rover teams estimate AI planning cuts route planning time by about 2x and delivers more consistent results.
📊 @tech
Silicon Valley predicted the future before the future arrived🤣
📊 @tech
🌍 Google launches Project Genie for AI-generated virtual worlds
Google has launched Project Genie, a new AI service for creating virtual worlds. The tool is available through Google AI Ultra in the US. Access costs $250.
Project Genie lets users generate worlds from text or images. A preview is created first and can be edited before the full world is generated. The system combines Genie 3, Nano Banana Pro, and Gemini.
The product enters the same space as world generation tools from World Labs, Runway, and AMI Labs. Google’s version focuses on interactive movement inside the generated environment.
This is Google’s first public release aimed at user-created interactive worlds.
📊 @tech
✔️ AI takes over homework grading in Chinese schools
Chinese schools are increasingly using AI to check homework. Systems scan handwritten notebooks, find mistakes, and assign grades automatically.
The technology is already used in hundreds of schools in Shanghai, Beijing, and other large cities. For essays and creative tasks, teachers often adjust results because algorithms still miss nuance.
According to developers, these systems cut teacher workload by almost half. Time shifts from routine grading to direct work with students.
📊 @tech
🌐 Chrome turns into an AI agent with Gemini integration
Google rolled out a major update that deeply integrates Gemini into Google Chrome. The browser now includes a persistent Gemini side panel that stays open across tabs and works alongside whatever page is active.
Users can compare products across sites, summarize reviews, or check availability while browsing.
Chrome also adds in-browser image transformation, connected access to Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Maps, and shopping tools, plus an auto browse mode that handles multi step tasks like price research, form filling from PDFs, or adding items to a cart with budget limits.
The update shifts Chrome from passive browsing to task execution. For now, advanced features are limited to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US.
📊 @tech
📄 OpenAI launches Prism for writing research papers
OpenAI has released Prism, a collaborative LaTeX editor built on technology from its acquired startup Crixet. The tool embeds ChatGPT directly into the writing workflow.
Prism can check citations, turn sketches into LaTeX formulas or diagrams, and assist with drafting inside the editor. It is positioned as a working environment rather than a separate chat tool.
The product is free to use. Subscribers to ChatGPT are expected to get additional features later.
📊 @tech
On this day in 2010: iPad unveiled.
📊 @tech
🎮 Doom runs on wireless earbuds with under 1 MB of RAM
Australian developer Arin Sarkisyan got Doom running on Pinebuds Pro, the only wireless earbuds with open firmware. Each earbud uses a Cortex M4F chip rated at 300 MHz, though stock firmware caps it at 100 MHz to save battery.
Bluetooth was too slow for video. The workaround was USB to UART via the earbuds’ contact pads, pushing 96 KB per frame. Memory was tighter. Doom expects at least 4 MB of RAM, while the earbuds expose under 1 MB. The game code was trimmed and assets compressed from 4.2 MB to 1.7 MB.
The result is Doom at 18 FPS over an MJPEG stream, playable through a browser connection. It runs, which is the whole point.
📊 @tech
🤖 Open-source ClawdBot runs as a local AI agent
🔸 ClawdBot is gaining attention as a new open-source AI agent that runs fully on a local machine. The agent can be deployed as a self-hosted service and accessed through common messengers like Telegram, WhatsApp, or Discord.
🔸 It goes beyond a chat interface. ClawdBot can open a browser, run terminal commands, read and edit files, access the camera and screen, and handle automation tasks through defined skills. The setup is designed for direct control rather than cloud dependency.
🔸 The agent is highly customizable. Users can connect their own tools, integrate smart home devices, link external services, and extend behavior through plugins. It also includes a file-based memory system with long-term context stored in MEMORY.md and daily logs stored by date, both indexed and reused in prompts.
ClawdBot is built by Peter Steinberger, founder and CTO of PSPDFKit, as a personal project. It is unrelated to Anthropic despite the name similarity.
Source:
https://github.com/clawdbot/clawdbot
https://clawd.bot/
📊 @tech
🤖 AI-generated conjoined twins pull 200,000 followers in a month
🔸 An account featuring a two-headed girl went viral online. The characters are presented as conjoined twins named Valeria and Kamila. The account gained about 200,000 followers in 1 month.
🔸 Men in the comments write love messages, send donations, and propose marriage to both characters. Engagement stays high across posts.
The catch is simple. The twins and all images are fully generated by AI.
Attention remains easy to capture when realism is convincing.
📊 @tech
🔭 James Webb captures the sharpest image of the Helix Nebula
🔸 The James Webb Space Telescope released its most detailed image yet of the Helix Nebula, also known as the Eye of God. The nebula sits about 655 light years from Earth, making it one of the closest planetary nebulae we can study.
🔸 The image reveals dense cometary knots. These pillar shaped structures form when hot gas from a dying star collides with colder dust and gas ejected earlier. The interaction sculpts the nebula’s distinctive shape.
🔸 The colors reflect physics, not art. Blue marks the hottest gas under ultraviolet radiation. Yellow shows cooler regions where hydrogen forms molecules. Red orange edges trace the coldest material where gas thins out and dust begins to form.
It is a direct look at the final stage of a star’s life, with material that can later seed new systems.
Full resolution image is available here
📊 @tech
🗺 A DeepMind engineer built a full map of New York without writing code
The project is an interactive isometric pixel map of NYC, styled like SimCity 2000. Streets, blocks, and buildings are laid out at city scale, and you can explore it directly in the browser.
The workflow is the point:
🔸 3D city data from CityGML and Google Maps 3D Tiles is rendered with an isometric camera to create a structural base
🔸 Those renders are transformed into pixel-art scenes using generative models, including Nano Banana Pro and a fine-tuned Qwen Image-Edit
🔸 Building coordinates and metadata are tracked so generations are placed consistently across the map
The result is not hand-drawn art and not traditional programming either.
This is what happens when agents replace manual pipelines, even for visual world-building.
📊 @tech
🤖 OpenAI quietly rebuilt a robotics team
OpenAI launched a robotics lab in 2025 that now has about 100 employees, according to Business Insider. The work stayed mostly out of public view while attention focused on models and products.
This is not their first attempt. OpenAI built robotic hands that solved a Rubik’s Cube years ago, then shut that effort down in 2020. Since then, the company backed robotics startups like Figure, 1X, and Physical Intelligence instead of building hardware itself.
What changed:
🖱 A dedicated robotics lab started in early 2025
🖱 The team focuses on data collection, not humanoids
🖱 Robotic arms run tasks like making toast or folding laundry
🖱 Systems operate nearly around the clock to generate training data
There is no confirmed humanoid robot project yet. For now, OpenAI appears to be learning how to train robots reliably, whether to build machines later or to supply the brains for others.
📊 @tech