🕶️ Altman hearts Trump, roasts Zuck, doubts Congress

Ten bullets of updates

1. 💔 Bumble to cut 30% of staff as part of a broad overhaul, citing the need for “focus and velocity” amid mounting competition and stagnant growth.

2. ⚡ Amazon plans $230B in AI data center investments, aiming to dominate infrastructure as demand for cloud, chips, and power skyrockets.

3.  🧼 Two brothers turned a car-cleaning side hustle into a $100M brand, proving boring products can still scale with sharp marketing and relentless execution.

4. 🧠 “Heart-centered” leadership gains traction as founders ditch cold logic for emotional awareness to boost team trust, retention, and performance.  

5. 🚀 Finnish startup IQM takes cues from SpaceX to mass-produce quantum computers, aiming for scalable hardware that slashes costs and accelerates adoption.

6. 📊 A Lyft data glitch inspired Eventual, a new startup helping engineers catch silent data failures, now backed by Amplify and spearheading observability 2.0.

7. 💬 VCs bet on next-gen consumer startups blending AI, dating, and social apps, as founders chase emotional engagement over pure utility.

8. 🧬 Longevity startup Maha fuels a new wave of biohackers, backing fringe treatments and DIY science in the race to radically extend human life.

9. 🚗 Luxury EV sales are stalling as buyers shift to cheaper, practical models; signaling trouble for high-end brands betting on prestige over price.

10. 🗣️ Founders are embracing “echo hooks”: simple, sticky phrases designed to make startups memorable and repeatable in pitches, ads, and investor decks.

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📚 Anthropic Wins Big on Fair Use; But a $5B Book Bill May Be Coming

Anthropic just notched the first major fair use win for generative AI, but it’s not walking away unscathed. A federal judge ruled that training AI on copyrighted books can qualify as fair use, calling it “one of the most transformative” uses in modern law. That’s a game-changer for every startup fighting similar lawsuits.

But the celebration is muted: the same ruling says Anthropic knowingly downloaded over 7 million pirated books, kept the files, and could now owe billions in damages. The company may have cleared the fair use bar, but now it’s headed to trial over claims it built an AI empire on stolen words.

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The Ultimate Pitch Deck Guide - 2025

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These companies just raised money

1. 💬 Abridge doubles its valuation to $5.3B in just 4 months as its AI medical scribe gains traction with hospitals eager to cut admin work.

2. ♻️ Novoloop scales upcycled plastic production with $100M in funding, turning waste into high-performance materials for shoes, phones, and more.

3. 🗣️ Wispr raises $30M for its AI-powered dictation app, blending neuroscience and voice tech to rethink how we write, work, and communicate.

4. 📦 India’s GoKwik raises $13M at a $700M valuation, betting on smarter checkout tech and AI to boost conversion rates for DTC brands.

5. 🔋 Nascent Materials exits stealth with $5.5M to reinvent LFP batteries using AI-designed molecules, promising cheaper, longer-lasting EV power.

6. 🛰️ Lux Aeterna raises $7.5M to make satellites reusable, bringing circular hardware and cost cuts to the next generation of space infrastructure.

7. 🎙️ Synthflow raises $7.4M with a pitch for AI voice agents that sound human and handle sales calls, tapping a hot niche in the B2B automation boom.

8. 🧪 Danish startup Cellugy raises €4.9M to replace microplastics in cosmetics with fermented sugar cellulose, tapping into biotech’s green beauty revolution.

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🤝 Sam Altman Praises Trump, Brushes Off Zuck, and Doubts Lawmakers Can Keep Up

At a live Hard Fork event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Trump “really gets” the stakes of AI and credited him for launching the $100B Stargate initiative just days after taking office. That alliance may clash with OpenAI’s own legal battles, but Altman seems unfazed, even as he downplays friction with Microsoft and shrugs off Meta’s billion-dollar AI talent raid.

Alongside COO Brad Lightcap, Altman called regulation essential, but admitted he’s losing faith in governments' ability to keep pace. He also warned that AI will reshape the job market, but tried to spin it as history repeating: new tools, richer lives.

Meanwhile, Meta’s “superintelligence” push got a dig, with Lightcap suggesting Zuck just thinks he’s super intelligent.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. TODAY! l Crash Course in Financial Modeling by Slidebean l Jun 26 l Online

2. Entrepreneur First Bangalore - Fall l Deadline: Jun 29 l Bangalore

3. Slidebean Webinar: Financial Modeling Bootcamp l Jul 1 l Online

4. Entrepreneur First London - Summer | Deadline: July 6 | UK

5. Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Jul 9 l Online

6. Startupbootcamp | Energy & Sustainability | Deadline: Aug 10 | South Africa

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