Top News | X CEO steps down: Linda Yaccarino announced her departure from the “everything app” on Wednesday following a two year tenure. On the platform she’s been managing, Yaccarino posted that she’s immensely grateful to X owner Elon Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.” Musk replied, rather tersely, “thank you for your contributions,” and has yet to comment further on his CEO’s departure. Yaccarino’s exit comes just a day after xAI’s Grok started posting antisemitic and racist commentary and had to be temporarily shut down, but it’s unclear whether or not the two stories are connected; the Times suggests her departure was already in motion prior to the Grok-troversy. Cyberstarts raises $300M “cash out” fund: The Israeli seed investment firm (co-founded by friend of the pod Gili Raanan!) plans to use the money to purchase shares of its portfolio companies from employees, rewarding essential and long-time staffers with an opportunity to cash out their vested shares. Raanan told Forbes that the move is part of an overall effort to rethink the venture capital model and provide additional liquidity to startups and their executives. a16z moves to Nevada: In a newly-published blog post, Andreessen Horowitz execs Jai Ramaswamy, Andy Hill, and Kevin McKinley argue that Delaware’s Court of Chancery has introduced “legal uncertainty” into the landscape for tech startups that have incorporated in the state. On the other hand, they explain that Nevada has been historically business-friendly and recently undertook a program making their corporate legal system more “technical” and “non-ideological.” The post goes further than just announcing the move and explaining their reasoning; it actively encourages their portfolio companies and HOPEFUL portfolio companies to consider incorporating outside of Delaware moving forward.
| TWiST500 | Let’s talk LangChain. The TWiST 500 members have developed tools that make it easier to quickly build bespoke apps using popular LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4. Just two years into its startup journey, LangChain has grown from a single piece of open source software into a robust platform, helping devs design AI apps for a wide variety of use cases and purposes. | This project has been coming together QUICKLY. LangChain is already pulling in around $16 million in annual revenue, and its first major product — the code monitoring and debugging tool LangSmith — is already in use by a reported 40,000 teams, at companies including Uber, LinkedIn, and Mercor. Another tool, LangGraph, helps businesses design custom AI agents, and it’s currently securing more than 20 million monthly downloads. | Growth like that, especially in the AI space right now, means a long line-up of eager investors. So it’s not a huge surprise that LangChain just raised $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, in a round led by IVP. That’s on top of a $20 million Series A from February 2024 at a $200 million valuation; prior backers include Sequoia, Benchmark, Conviction, and Lux Capital. | LangChain has obviously found product market fit, and certainly seems to be off to the races, but it’s important to bear in mind that this is essentially the most crowded of all spaces at the moment. Vibecoding tools are the summer music festival of startup investments in 2025. In order to secure solid returns on all this VC cash, LangChain is going to have to continue growing at a speedy pace, while fending off challenges from noteworthy rivals like Windsurf, Cursor, Lovable, and many many more. – Lon | A message from Monarch Money | Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Visit monarchmoney.com/twist for half off on your first year. | This Week in Startups | E2148: Jason’s back in Austin, and he and Alex are running down a huge holiday weekend in tech news. Exits are heating up with $67.7B in Q2 activity, QSBS got a major expansion in the Big Beautiful Bill, Robinhood is pushing boundaries with its tokenized SPV innovation, PLUS Jason’s thoughts on Elon Musk’s new “America Party” and a brand new NFL-themed Polymarket. | E2147: Alex hosts another blockbuster panel of insiders, with Astasia Myers from Felicis, Matt Turck of First Mark Capital, and D.A. Wallach from Time BioVentures joining for a deep-dive on the biotech Great Depression, the post-Q2 startup landscape, revenue durability and product market fit in AI, supporting founders from academia, innovations in fertility and pre-natal treatments, and much much more. | E2146: Jason’s away, but Alex is hosting founders from not just one or two but FOUR of our favorite startups! First up, Grammerly CEO Shishir Mehrotra AND Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra join together to talk about their companies coming together, and how they plan to use AI to reshape the future of work. PLUS Manu Sharma from data labeling innovators LabelBox AND Jeff Cardenas from humanoid robot startup Apptronik. Now that’s a packed show! | TWiST Partner Offers | Oracle: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Save up to 50% on your cloud bill at https://www.oracle.com/twist Sentry: Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users get 3 months free of the Business plan which covers 150k errors. Go to sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST OpenPhone: Create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. TWiST listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://www.openphone.com/twist
| LAUNCH Accelerator | Our current Accelerator batch is graduating! Watch 11 strong startups pitch to Jason and our investor-judges. We are livestreaming the event on Monday, July 28th at 12:30 PM PT. Register here. | Want to Work for This Week in Startups? | We’re looking to fill two in-person sales positions at our Austin, Texas HQ! First, a high-performing Sales Executive to help us seek out and promote clients, sponsorships, branded content, and more. Plus an experienced Sales Manager to lead, coach, and scale our sales executive team, while setting performance goals. Love the podcast and have B2B sales experience? We want to hear from you! | SF Live-Work Space Now Available | Need a flexible living and working environment in San Francisco? This thoughtfully designed loft-style residence at 787 Bryant St., the heart of the vibrant SOMA district and the city’s creative hub, is now available for rent or purchase. Check the listing for more details. | Founder University | Applications are open for Founder University Cohort 11, a 12-week remote pre-accelerator program tailored towards navigating early-startup practices, building an MVP, and growing traction. Submit your application at Founder University— Cohort 10 will kick off Summer 2025! | The TWiST500 newsletter is the new, updated, and improved TWiST Ticker. |
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