IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The largest VC deal ever!

Altman’s OpenAI just closed the largest funding deal of all time, raising a whopping $6.6B at a $157B post-money valuation to supercharge its mission.

Thrive Capital led the charge with a $1.3B contribution, joined by heavyweights like Microsoft, Nvidia, Softbank, Ark, and Fidelity.

During negotiations, OpenAI set the bar with a minimum of $250M entry to participate. Now, the company says it’s ready to “double down on leadership in frontier AI research, ramp up computing capacity, and keep building tools to tackle tough problems.”

For some context, xAI previously held the record, raising $6B earlier this year. With this latest round, OpenAI is now the third-most valuable VC-backed startup, trailing only ByteDance and SpaceX.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT
How to crack product-market fit in web3?

Finding product-market fit isn’t a one-size-fits-all journey, especially for startups venturing into the world of Web3. The community may still be relatively small, but it’s constantly rewriting the playbook for valuable blockchain startups, which is always evolving.

Jason Rosenthal, Head of Crypto Startup Accelerator at a16z, dives deep into five strategies you can experiment with—while keeping important precautions in mind. Just like any other startup, you’ll either hit the jackpot or face setbacks, but what truly matters is your ability to learn and adapt along the way.

link to article + video

IN THE SPOTLIGHT
New social media network, without the 'social’

Feeling lonely? There’s an app for that—without the people.

Inspired by his own feelings of isolation during tough times, Michael Sayman launched SocialAI, a new social media platform that swaps human interactions for AI-driven engagement.

We gave it a spin, and here’s the gist: imagine X but without the 'following' feed. In the onboarding process, you’re the only human, and you get to pick your "followers" from a mix of AI personalities—think supportive, trolls, skeptics, optimists, drama queens, and more. Once you post a thought, the AI bots, like Supportive Sam or Optimistic Oliver, chime in with responses based on their personalities.

No real human connection, total control over your audience, and zero awkward silences—AI has made it possible. We’re curious to see how SocialAI evolves from here.

source

IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Thousands of days until superintelligence

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman shared his vision for an AI-driven future in his personal blog post, “The Intelligence Age.”

AI enthusiasts are eagerly waiting for Sam to officially announce that we’ve achieved superintelligence. He suggests we might be just three years away, thanks to successful deep learning proof-of-concepts. Alongside the need for more energy and computing power, Sam emphasizes the importance of human will in paving the way to this new era—the Intelligence Age—following the Industrial Age.

Sam advocates for democratizing AI, ensuring it’s not just a tool for the wealthy. However, he has some challenges to tackle at OpenAI. With recent executive departures, including ex-CTO Mira Murati, and the transition to for-profit status while preparing for a new funding round, it seems like reaching the next level is a matter of time and focus.

source

SUBSTRATES
What else is on the radar?

WEB3

• Robinhood now supports crypto transfers in Europe for 24 assets.

• Trump’s family borrowing and lending platform, World Liberty Financial, is now welcoming users to complete KYC processes.

• Arbitrum One hits the milestone of 1 billion transactions.

• Solana teams up with Google Cloud to advance Web3 game development.

• PayPal completed the first business payment transaction using PYUSD as an invoice payment to Ernst & Young LLP on September 23.

• Franklin Templeton files an S-1 form with the SEC to launch a new crypto index ETF, the first to combine BTC and ETH in a single fund.

• CryptoKitties makes a comeback with 'All The Zen,' its new Telegram game on the Flow blockchain.

• LayerZero Labs and EigenLabs launch CryptoEconomic Decentralized Verifier Networks (DVNs), introducing a new security mechanism for decentralized networks.

• Binance founder CZ is released from prison after four months, becoming the wealthiest person ever to serve time in the U.S.

• Bitwise Invest files for a spot XRP ETF, while the SEC has filed an appeal in the Ripple case.

• Indonesia’s postal service, PosIND, launches postage stamps featuring a digital NFT collection.

AI

• Microsoft debuts a Copilot makeover, adding 'voice,' 'vision,' and 'Think Deeper' features to handle more complex requests, alongside an AI-generated daily podcast, AI search, and more.

• OpenAI concluded its DevDay by announcing expanded real-time API access, the ability to adapt GPT-4’s vision capabilities for a wide range of uses, model distillation, access to the o1-preview model for Tier 3 developers, prompt caching, and more—along with rumors of a new prompt generator.

• Google DeepMind launches AlphaChip, an AI system designed to generate optimal chip designs in just hours.

• OpenAI debuts 'Canvas,' a new feature for writing and coding projects that allows users to interact with the output.

• Hugging Face surpasses 1 million AI models, with a new AI repository being created every 10 seconds.

• OpenAI co-founder, Durk Kingma joins Anthropic.

FROM THE REPOSITORY
Check this out!

• Making sense of stablecoins by Visa’s Head of Crypto division.

• How does Perplexity growth change our search habits?

• What are the top played games on Ton?

Use now or save for later:

• Describe your product and generate user stories with Requstory.

• Build forms and reward respondents with crypto using DappForm.

• Use Serra to find the best-fit candidates for your company.

Visual of the week: Who’s (not) excited about AI?

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