This Week in Startups

Matt Gialich, AstroForge founder building asteroid-mining spacecraft, talks space metals, magnetic docking, failed launches, and the high-stakes November mission. Sam Dare of Templar, focused on decentralized AI training, digs into blockchain incentives and cheaper model-building. Yazin Alirhayim, creator of private note tool OpenOats, demos real-time meeting transcription and AI prompts.

Michaela Bazo, Metanova Labs co-founder, and Pedro Penna, technical lead in decentralized biotech, dive into Bittensor-powered drug discovery and the race to cut screening costs. Tom Bliers, BitCast Network co-founder, explores paying creators for watch time and branded videos. Max Septi, Score founder, shows how tiny vision AI models can make real-world deployment cheaper and faster.

Chris Lattner, Modular CEO and compiler pioneer, joins Jake Loosararian, Gecko Robotics CEO building industrial inspection robots. They dig into a $2.5B chip-smuggling scandal, the GPU shortage, and why Google TPUs could challenge Nvidia. They also explore purpose-built robots vs humanoids, self-driving competition, American reindustrialization, and AI’s role in reviving old infrastructure.

Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund GP and early-stage investor, talks about how AI is reshaping startup teams, founder expectations, and venture math. Ryan Mahdavi, Ceel CEO in automated compliance, digs into the Delve controversy, trust, and diligence gaps. Seg Sheng, Brick CEO building AI energy tech, shares how hardware and software can cut power bills. Gavin Zaentz, LeadPoet co-founder, demos decentralized lead gen on Bittensor.

Keller Cliffton, Zipline CEO building one of the world’s biggest autonomous delivery networks, shares how drone logistics went from “basically illegal” to massive scale. Rahul Vohra, creator of Rapportive and Superhuman, walks through hacking Gmail, viral growth, bold product bets, paid onboarding, and the Grammarly deal. Expect drones, blood delivery, sky maps, suburban retail, and fearless founders.

Vlad Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO, joins for a sharp look at how a fintech giant scaled fast. He gets into free trading as a growth engine. He talks about relaunching products again and again. There’s also startup survival through bad press, hiring and design taste, and how AI could reshape products, support, and competition.

Matt Angle, Paradromics founder building implantable brain-computer tech, talks thought-to-text, first human implants, and what comes after restoring speech and movement. Tom O'Leary, JetZero CEO rethinking aircraft design, dives into all-wing jets, airport compatibility, and fuel savings. Dan Zavorotny, Nutrisense CEO in metabolic health, explores glucose tracking, personalized food responses, and AI-powered coaching.

Tom Noble, a website and content builder who amplified the Flat White or F Off vibe, and Charlie Hurst, a graphic designer who crafted the brand visuals and pop-up merch. They chat about turning a viral slogan into a real brand. Short takes cover going from social posts to pop-up cafés, choosing a single-product coffee concept, merch and visuals, and the logistics of scaling a stunt into business.

Nathan Parker, Head at EdgeCase, helps AV teams find and resolve rare failure modes. Ming Maa, executive at Moove, scales and operates city fleets. Ben Seidl, founder of Autolane, builds orchestration software and hardware for autonomous commerce. They discuss mapping vs generalization, operational design domains and city-specific scaling, fleet safety and observability, and which vehicle form factors will win in autonomous delivery.

Suresh Ramamurthy, founder of NetXD and builder of a cryptographically secured banking ledger, talks about agent-driven banking with user-approved workflows. He demos how agents can move money, queue approvals, and enforce rules like savings sweeps. Short, tech-forward conversation about secure open-banking APIs and automation reshaping how people interact with banks.