Top News | Taiwan, led by TSMC, agreed to invest $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing in exchange for reduced American tariffs, significantly expanding chip production in Arizona. TSMC will soon operate roughly a dozen Arizona plants, including manufacturing facilities, after recently purchasing 900 acres for expansion. The company said it plans to spend up to $56 billion on capital expenditures this year after seeing strong demand for its chips. | OpenAI announced it will begin testing ads in ChatGPT’s Free and Go tiers, outlining early ad formats and principles centered on user trust and transparency. The company says ads won’t influence model responses and are part of a broader effort to expand access while maintaining a clear separation between advertising and AI outputs. | Court testimony alleges that Sam Altman held undisclosed financial interests in OpenAI through a Y Combinator fund and secretly owned the OpenAI Startup Fund while serving as CEO and an “independent” director of the nonprofit. If this is accurate, it raises serious concerns around conflicts of interest. The claims have not yet been resolved and remain allegations from ongoing legal proceedings. This emerges as Sam Altman and Elon Musk exchange barbs on X. | TWiST 500 | Higgsfield, a generative AI video startup founded by former Snap executive Alex Mashrabov, has raised $130 million and reached a $1.3 billion valuation less than a year after launch. The company is seeing rapid adoption from brands and marketers, with video creation increasingly treated as scalable infrastructure rather than one-off production. Higgsfield now generates millions of videos daily as AI-driven video becomes central to modern marketing workflows. | Higgsfield is now the fastest-scaling generative AI startup in history, reaching 15M+ users and a $200M run rate in just nine months. The platform generates 4.5M videos per day and doubled revenue from $100M to $200M in only two months, signaling explosive demand from marketers. | ElevenLabs is in talks to raise at an $11 billion valuation, just four months after a secondary sale valued the voice AI startup at $6.6 billion. This follows their recent announcement of surpassing $330 million in ARR. Their last formal Series C round in January reached a $3.3 billion valuation after raising $180 million led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Growth.
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• X | | This Week in Startups | E2235: On our latest edition of TWiST Tokyo, Jason welcomes legendary angel investor (and long-time friend of the pod) Thomas McInerney. His list of investments reads like a Who’s Who of the tech elite, including Notion, SpaceX, Uber, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity…. At Founder University x Tokyo, they discuss how the angel investing landscape has shifted, why it’s so important for founders to stay humble, the reasons that investors need to stay not just optimistic but aggressively so, and what angels can add to companies beyond just writing checks. | E2235: Jason loves Japan’s Uniqlo brand, so the opportunity to speak with board member Kathy Matsui (also one of the country’s top VCs) was too good to pass up. Once they’re done checking out JCal’s latest style, the conversation turns to Japan’s startup revolution, why the country’s economic recovery seemed to take so long, and why her firm MPower Partners is seeking companies reflecting “Japan Dynamism” for their second fund. | E2234: In a special Tuesday ep, Jason chats with Alex Shieh of The Antifraud Company. Did you know that, under the US government’s False Claims Act, Americans who uncover fraud get to keep up to 30% of the recovered funds? It’s such a good deal, Shieh turned it into a business model for his startup. PLUS on the latest TWiST Flashback, we take a look back at a classic 2016 interview with Boom founder Blake Scholl. | TWiST Partner Offers | Crusoe Cloud: Crusoe is the AI factory company. Reliable infrastructure and expert support. Visit https://crusoe.ai/build to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today. | Uber AI Solutions - Your trusted partner to get AI to work in the real world. Book a demo with them TODAY at Uber.com/twist | | 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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