Top News | Ripple buying Rail: The blockchain giant is picking up Rail, a stablecoin startup, for $200 million, just weeks after the federal government passed the GENIUS Act, opening up clear stablecoin rules and regulations. Rail is a Canadian payment processor (previously known as Layer2 Financial) that uses stablecoins to help customers move money quickly and efficiently across international borders. You know… the initial promise of cryptocurrency that got people so excited about it in the first place. Just last year, Rail reported that they control around 10% all the world’s B2B stablecoin payments, valued at around $3.6 billion. That’s about twice as much as Bridge was moving when it sold to Stripe earlier this year for a tidy $1 billion. POTUS introduces AI search product: President Trump’s media company, Truth Social, introduced a new AI search feature, powered by Perplexity’s Sonar API. Truth Social promises that the chatbot will provide “direct, contextually accurate answers with transparent citations” in an effort to “exponentially increase the amount of information” at its users’ disposal. However, Axios (and TWiST) played around with it a bit and confirmed that the bot is searching and citing a relatively limited list of Trump-friendly sources, including Fox News, Epoch Times, and the Washington Times, while avoiding YouTube, Reddit, NPR, and other platforms and publications that are frequently cited by the public-facing main Perplexity app. Bumble lost users in Q2: Dating app fatigue is apparently here to stay, as the once-iconic Bumble lost 8.7% of its paying users last quarter, bringing the total down to 3.8 million. Their solution? AI, of course. The app plans to introduce both human and LLM-powered dating coaches to help users make more and better connections. They’re also introducing a “BFF” app for Gen Z-ers who are looking for IRL friendships rather than romance.
| TWiST500 | OpenAI, the TWiST 500 titan that we just can’t stop talking about, unveiled GPT-5, which they’re calling “the best model in the world” for both coding and writing. (So for everyone playing “world’s most powerful AI model” musical chairs, time to shift over one seat!) CEO Sam Altman calls the new release a major step forward over previous iterations, comparing GPT-3 to “talking to a high school student” and GPT-5 as “a PhD-level expert.” | One major change over previous generations: GPT-5 lives within ChatGPT as a single model, rather than having multiple variations for reasoning vs. more complex multi-step queries. The company developed their own internal router that examines prompts and decides independently whether to send it along to the standard model or one better equipped to handle more complex problems. | In a possible nod to Grok and its character avatars, OpenAI has also given GPT-5 four “personality themes”: Cynic, Robot, Listener, and Nerd. (Hey!) There are a few other vibe-forward customization options as well. For example, users can change the background colors for different chat threads. | Also of note: GPT-5 was trained for “safe completions,” allowing it to give partial answers to questionable prompts that are still within safety parameters, even if previous versions would have refused the question entirely. | Behind the scenes, Jason pointed out that several segments of OpenAI’s pitch were aimed directly at popular, up-and-coming AI tools and products. GPT’s ability to write apps and edit code are coming directly for startups like Lovable, Bolt.new, Cursor, and Replit. GPT-5’s ability to handle intricate and figurative writing could pose a threat to editing software like Grammarly and text generators like Copy AI and Jasper AI. If GPT-5’s voice mode is as new and improved as Altman suggests, that could be bad news for AI chat personality generators like Character AI and Replika, not to mention text-to-voice specialists ElevenLabs. | These companies may be the only ones keeping an even closer look at GPT-5 than us! – Lon | A message from .Tech Domains | Say it without saying it. Head to get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today. | This Week in Startups | E2161: On a huge, action packed TWiST, Jason and Alex investigate Luckin Coffee’s (potentially CCP-backed?) takeover of Manhattan, explain why Disney is sunsetting the iconic Hulu streaming app, probe the difference between open-weight and open-source AI models, look ahead at OpenAI’s big GPT-5 announcement, PLUS they welcome Zach Dive of Adam.new to explain why he made a deepfake ad starring JCal. The nerve! | E2160: It’s a packed news-heavy edition of This Week in Startups, with Jason and Alex asking which countries are leading the AI race (in terms of academics), debating whether covert agencies are spying on Meta’s superintelligence team, marveling at BYD’s mega car carrier, criticizing Lina Khan’s inappropriate Figma victory lap on social media, AND a big announcement. We’re bringing Founder University to the MENA region. Now that’s a podcast! | E2159: Alex is back with three more interviews with some of our favorite TWiST 500 founders. Dr. Hon Weng Chong of Cortical Labs walks us through the basics of biological computing. Then, Turing founder Jonathan Siddarth teaches us about LLM benchmarking and why these tests need to get much more difficult FAST. Finally, Brendan Foody of Mercor tells us how they’re using AI to rethink the hiring process. | TWiST Partner Offers | Lemon.io: Hire pre-vetted remote developers and get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist CLA: Innovation takes balance. Our CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at CLAconnect.com/tech. Monarch Money: Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Visit monarchmoney.com/twist for half off on your first year.
| TWiST wants to hear from YOU! | Along with our partners at Perspective AI, we’ve created a new AI-powered survey inviting our listeners to give us their feedback on the show, and specifically what kinds of topics they want to hear about on future episodes. Please take a few minutes to chat with Perspective’s friendly AI agent and share your thoughts on our podcast! We’d love to hear from you. | Founder U is coming to the MENA region! | Our 12-week pre-accelerator—designed to help early-stage founders build and grow—kicks off this fall in Saudi Arabia. The first cohort launches in Riyadh on November 3rd, followed by in-person and virtual sessions throughout the program. Founders in MENA: this is your chance to turn your idea into a business and get world-class insights on building a successful startup. Apply today: https://mena.founder.university/ | 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. | The TWiST500 newsletter is the new, updated, and improved TWiST Ticker. |
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