This Week in Startups

Yazin Alirhayim, creator of OpenOats and Sidecast, Alex Finn, founder of Creator Buddy, and Ryan Carson, startup builder behind AntFarm and Claw Chief, unpack Anthropic cutting off Claude access for third-party agents. They demo Sidecast, Claw Chief, and Henry. The conversation jumps from AI coworkers and rising costs to open models, token-saving prompts, and ethics in AI-driven media.

Marik Hazan, FeltSense CEO building autonomous startup agents, joins after his viral stunt rebuilding YC W26 companies in a weekend. Andrew D’Souza, founder of AI networking tool Boardy, demos an AI board member that makes selective intros. They spar over whether founders should fear copycat AI, what makes a startup defensible, and how AI can turn networking into a business.

Nick Harris, Lightmatter CEO building photonic AI hardware, joins Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia CEO focused on AI video for business, and Jeremy Fraenkel, Fundamental CEO working on AI for tabular data. They dig into copper bottlenecks in data centers, why tabular data is AI’s overlooked frontier, build vs buy for AI tools, OpenAI’s changing priorities, and the race toward AGI.

Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures founder and former Navy SEAL, joins Salen Churi, Trust Ventures investor in regulated industries, and Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund partner and Varda Space cofounder. They spar over a possible SpaceX IPO, AI’s PR mess, defense tech bubble fears, rare earth supply chains, Starlink’s impact, and the Moon race.

Shubham Saboo, a Google AI product manager, shares his five-step plan for autonomous AI teams. Mike Nosov, co-founder of MoltWorld, demos a Minecraft-like world where swarms of agents coordinate. Haakam Aujla, co-founder of AgentMail, shows email built for agent-native workflows. They explore shared memory, fixed schedules, self-rewriting agents, distributed work, and native inboxes for bots.

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.