This Week In Startups is made possible by: Grasshopper Bank https://grasshopper.bank/twistLinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twistNorthwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today’s show: Jason breaks down the real math behind raising a seed round. Here’s the funnel: contact 150 firms, get 50 first meetings, convert 2o into second meetings, and close 2 term sheets. PLUS Jason responds to viewer questions about why hardware is no longer a dirty word for investors, how to...
May 29, 2026•58 min•Ep. 2295
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Render - render.com/twist Deel - deel.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today’s show: The "Ryanair of drone delivery" just raised $50 million and plans to bring its technology from Europe to the United States. Manna founder Bobby Healy explains to TWiST how his Dublin-based company completed 300,000 deliveries while some rivals are still publishing blog posts, and why low-cost airline economics will decide who win...
May 27, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 2293
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io Shopify https://shopify.com/twist Render https://render.com/twist Plaud https://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Startups like Divergent Technologies are producing components and aircraft for the military through new systems that are better, faster, and cheaper than conventional methods. CEO and co-founder Lukas Czinger stops by TWiST to share the company’s vertically integrated, AI-driven manufacturing platform and how he transiti...
May 23, 2026•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 2292
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twist LinkedIn - https://linkedIn.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Why raise $200 million if you are already profitable? That’s the question Jason and Alex put to Mercury’s founder and CEO, Immad Akhund, after the entrepreneur raised another massive round for his upstart, technology-friendly bank. TWiST then welcomed Kled founder A...
May 20, 2026•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 2291
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta - Vanta.com/TWIST Sentry - Sentry.io/TWIST Deel - Deel.com/TWIST Today’s show: AI is the villain of the 2026 commencement cycle, with business luminaries — including Eric Schmidt — booed for discussing or praising the technology. As students graduate into a job market forcibly reshaped by AI, increasingly negative public polling on the potential impacts of artificial intelligence on society is clearly not missing the mark. Jason and Alex then disc...
May 18, 2026•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 2299
This Week In Startups is made possible by: IM8 Health: IM8health.com/TWIST Squarespace: Squarespace.com/TWIST Render - Render.com/TWIST Self-driving just stopped being a science problem and became an engineering challenge instead. That's the through-line of today’s double-header with the CEOs of two of the most important AV companies in the world — Wayve's Alex Kendall and Waabi's Raquel Urtasun. Between them: ~$2B raised in the last six months, Uber as a partner, Nissan and Volvo as OEMs, and a...
May 15, 2026•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 2289
This Week In Startups is made possible by:Pilot - https://Pilot.com/TWISTGrasshopper Bank - https://Grasshopper.bank/TWISTQuo - https://Quo.com/TWiSTPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistAnthropic just declared every unauthorized secondary sale of its stock "void" — naming Hiive, Forge, Sydecar, Upmarket, and others in a public hit list. Jason and Alex sit down with Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures), Dave McClure (Practical VC), and Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures) to unpack what the AI lab’s move ...
May 13, 2026•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 2288
The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space). Thank you to our exclusive s...
May 13, 2026•1 hr 8 min
Today’s show: Cerebras just jacked its IPO range to $150–$160 a share, OpenAI bought a consulting firm to seed its $4 billion private-equity joint venture, and a startup in Oakland is electrolyzing magnesium out of seawater for one-third the going price. Alex Wilhelm and Jason Calacanis go deep with AI21 co-CEO Ori Goshen on why model orchestration, not bigger LLMs, will decide who wins enterprise AI. The crew also covered the decline of OpenClaw, TikTok's new £3.99 ad-free tier, more entries in...
May 11, 2026•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 2287
This Week In Startups is made possible by: IM8 Health - https://IM8health.com/TWIST Every - Every.io Sentry - https://Sentry.io/TWIST Banks don’t want to hand over their data to AI labs. So David Moscatelli built a $250,000 box that runs AI on-prem. He already has 1,600 pre-orders. On today’s episode of TWiST, Jason and Alex sit down with the Go Abacus founder and Yanez's Jose Caldera to unpack how regulated industries are getting AI without the cloud, why Bittensor subnet 54 is incentivizing mi...
May 09, 2026•1 hr 12 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twist PaperOS - https://paperos.com/twist LinkedIn Jobs - https:// linkedIn.com/twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist The top 5 U.S. venture firms captured 73% of all LP commits in Q1, and three veteran VCs say the math may have officially broken. Aleph's Michael Eisenberg argues we may be witnessing the end of a 60-year run for venture capital as a craft business. Maniv's Mike Granoff and Oxcart's Larry Covert...
May 06, 2026•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 2285
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Render - render.com/twist Vanta - vanta.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Have you wanted to invest in venture capital alongside your 401k contributions, but struggled to find a way to place a bet? Search no more, for the AngelList team has created USVC, a new fund that will accept investments of as little as $500 from folks who lack accreditation. USVC’s Ankur Napgal swung by the show to chat about investment str...
May 05, 2026•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 2284
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Pilot - https://pilot.com/twist Shopify - https://shopify.com/twist Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twist Today’s show: An AI agent named Valerie is running a real vending machine in San Francisco — setting prices, ordering inventory, managing a bank account, and posting to Instagram. And it's not just a stunt. We’re getting an early look at the future of one-agent companies. There’s still work to do to help agents ease into the economy, pot...
May 01, 2026•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 2283
The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google Cloud!Check out Google Cloud’s new report, “Future of AI: Perspectives on generative media for startups,” Featuring thoughts from today’s guest, Joaquín Cuenca AbelaVisit: goo.gle/futureofgenmedia to check it out!Today’s show:In today’s edition of TWiST AI Basics, J-Cal is joined by Joaquin Cuenca Abela, co-founder and CEO of Magnific (formerly known as Freepik). We’re discussing how generative AI is transforming the creative landscape for st...
Apr 30, 2026•23 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Render - https://Render.com/TWIST Northwest Registered Agent - https://NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/TWIST LinkedIn Jobs - https://LinkedIn.com/TWIST Today’s show: A beanie that reads your thoughts and turns them into text — no surgery required? Jason grills the Sabi co-founders on their noninvasive brain-computer interface, backed by Vinod Khosla, and calls a cap on the whole thing (until he doesn't). This episode of This Week in Startups covers a lot o...
Apr 29, 2026•56 min•Ep. 2282
This Week In Startups is made possible by: IM8 Health - IM8health.com/twist Sentry - Sentry.io/twist Deel - Deel.com/twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist What’s the technology story of the year? No, it’s not Anthropic’s Mythos model, nor any other AI model. Upcoming IPOs? Wrong again. Jason thinks it’s China’s government’s decision to block Meta's acquisition of Manus. The multi-billion-dollar deal was heralded as evidence that AI companies founded in China could sidestep onerous government medd...
Apr 28, 2026•53 min•Ep. 2281
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist LinkedIn Jobs - https://LinkedIn.com/twist Today’s show: It’s a News and Off-Duty weekend roundup! AngelList’s USVC fund is open to anyone with $500, but it’s getting pushback on social media. Do the critics have a point? A Special Forces soldier made $409K betting on the military’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Is the world just a big casino now? And a NYT podcast de...
Apr 25, 2026•50 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Render - https://render.com/twist Agree - https://agree.com Ro - https://Ro.co/Twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: The US military is running low on missiles, but now, Firehawk Aerospace is using 3D-printed solid rocket propellant to cut production costs in half and 5x U.S. output. Plus: PhD researcher Maruchi Kim just built camera-equipped earbuds that perform on par...
Apr 25, 2026•59 min•Ep. 2280
This Week In Startups is made possible by: LinkedIn Jobs - linkedIn.com/twist Grasshopper Bank - grasshopper.bank/twist Notion - notion.com Today’s show: This week, SpaceX announced that it was partnering with AI coding startup Cursor on new AI models. xAI’s parent company is bringing compute, while Cursor brings developer market share and recent successes, training its own coding models. The deal, while interesting, comes with a steep price tag. SpaceX will pay Cursor $10 billion for their shar...
Apr 22, 2026•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 2279
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Quo - https://quo.com/TWiST Vanta - https://vanta.com/twist Pilot - https://pilot.com/twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: *Eragon CEO Josh Sirota believes that you should “own your intelligence.” He demos a live enterprise AI operating system connecting email, Slack, calendar, and financial data into a single agentic layer that’s pre-trained to understand any business inside and out. PLUS we’ve got IONA Drones founder Etienne Louvet, a fi...
Apr 21, 2026•1 hr 17 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by:IM8 Health - https://IM8health.com/twist Grasshopper Bank - https://grasshopper.bank/twist Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistToday’s show:Is 3D printing the key to not just solving the housing crisis but bringing us all into a more beautiful and utopian future? ICON founder Jason Ballard thinks so. His company is already building homes for the unhoused and delivering barracks to Fort Bli...
Apr 18, 2026•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 2277
This Week In Startups is made possible by: LinkedIn Jobs - LinkedIn.com/twist Every.io - every.io Render - render.com/twist Today’s show: *Imagine scrolling through mobile games the way your flip through your TikTok feed. What if you could build your own game in 90 seconds and share it with the world? That’s what over 100,000 users are enjoying right now on Nanogram. On TWiST, we meet the co-founders: 22-year-old CEO Albert Brotherton and 24-year-old CTO Boris Radilov. They demo the app for us o...
Apr 15, 2026•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 2276
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Sentry - https://sentry.io/twist Deel - https://deel.com/twist Netsuite - https://netsuite.com/twist Plaud - https:// Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: *TAO just had its worst week since launch. One of Bittensor’s most prominent subnet operators allegedly dumped $10 million in tokens and walked away. We’re digging into what we know, how this could change the Bittensor community… and why dedicated builders still believe in this ecosystem. Jason and Lon are jo...
Apr 14, 2026•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 2275
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Pilot - https://pilot.com/TWIST Squarespace - https://squarespace.com/TWIST Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/TWIST Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist CrowdHealth - https://JoinCrowdHealth.com/twist Today’s show: TAO, the token associated with the Bittensor network, fell sharply last night after a major project declared it was taking its business elsewhere. Covenant AI had used Bittensor subnets 3, 39, and 89 before its abr...
Apr 11, 2026•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 2274
Anthropic just built a model so dangerous, they’re not even going to release it (for now). On TWiST, Jason, Alex, and Neurometric CEO Rob May discuss whether or not this is just another frontier model or a potential weapon of mass internet destruction. Claude Mythos Preview is already in the hands of over 40 Anthropic partners — including Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google — as part of its “Project Glasswing” security council. Together, they’ll test how quickly and easily the model can...
Apr 09, 2026•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 2273
Anthropic just pulled the plug on Claude subscriptions for OpenClaw and every third party agentic tool. So Jason and Lon welcome back three of our top TWiST OpenClaw experts to break down what it means, how much it’s going to cost now, and whether this is truly the end of the subsidized AI era. And they all brought demos! We’re checking out ClawChief from Ryan Carson, Alex Finn’s agent Henry, and Yazin Alirhayim’s Sidecast protocol, inspired by a special request from JCal! Hosts Jason Calacanis:...
Apr 07, 2026•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 2272
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Deel - deel.com/twist Grasshopper Bank - grasshopper.bank/twist Render - render.com/twist Plaud - Plaud.ai/twist An AI “holding company” rebuilt dozens of YC Winter ‘26 startups in one weekend. Now we’re bringing the founder responsible into Jason’s Courtroom to defend himself. PLUS a live demo of Boardy, the AI that acts like a virtual board member and makes crucial introductions. Find out why he gets to have so much agency, how creator Andrew D’Souza ...
Apr 03, 2026•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 2271
This Week in AI, JCal sits down with three CEOs building the infrastructure, intelligence, and interfaces for the next era of AI: Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO, Fundamental), Victor Riparbelli (CEO, Synthesia), and Nick Harris (CEO, Lightmatter). We break down what's actually happening beneath the AI hype: the data modality LLMs completely missed, why copper is the real bottleneck in AI data centers, OpenAI shutting down Sora, the build vs. buy debate for AI tools, and how close we really are to AGI. AI'...
Apr 02, 2026•30 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: PaperOS - https://PaperOS.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent- https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Every.io - https://Every.io Plaud - https:// Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Silicon Valley just lined up its biggest liquidity event in years: SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO that could target a $1.75 trillion valuation — potentially the largest public offering in history. Meanwhile, a new Quinnipiac poll shows that 62% of Americans aren't exc...
Apr 01, 2026•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 2270
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Quo - https:// quo.com/TWiST LinkedIn Jobs - https:// LinkedIn.com/twist Iru - https:// iru.com/twist Plaud - https:// Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Google project manager Shubham Saboo is running 6 AI agents on a Mac Mini that handle all of his side business autonomously, from research, to social posts, to newsletters. He joins Jason and Lon to walk us through his 5-step framework for designing an efficient AI agent team: Start with one agent and onboar...
Mar 31, 2026•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 2269
