🕶️ Another Musk merger mess: xAI + X edition

Big Tech is messy, AI is moody, and everyone’s reinventing themselves (again)

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Lucila Sarquis & Paula Echeverria
August 19, 2025

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Big Tech can’t stop rearranging the furniture—Meta is shuffling AI teams for the fourth time in six months while Elon fumbles through bolting xAI onto X. Parents, tired of factory-sized classrooms, are betting on microschools, proving smaller might just be smarter. Grammarly has reinvented itself as the teacher’s pet, grading and citing before you even ask, while AI models themselves are catching feelings…

Video pick: How big tech got scammed by an 'AI'

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Seven bullets of updates

  1. đź‘· Meta restructures AI teams for the fourth time in six months, aiming to improve a "broken" system as internal struggles persist.

  2. 🕵️ TikTok Shop is under fire for selling viral GPS trackers marketed to stalkers, raising fresh questions about platform accountability.

  3. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏾 Elon's plan to merge xAI with X faces integration hurdles despite a projected $20M in xAI revenue since launch.

  4. 🏫 Silicon Valley bets big on microschools, with over 1.5 million students turning to small, alternative classrooms as education shifts.

  5. ⛏️ Grammarly users get an AI-powered doc workspace with grading, proofreading, and citation tools after a major redesign.

  6. ,🚀 OpenAI's GPT-5 update aims to enhance niceness in interactions, boosting user satisfaction by 30%.

  7. 🪪 Silicon Valley companies now start green card sponsorships on day one to attract and retain scarce AI talent more easily.

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AI self-care is in: Claude refuses your toxic energy

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Anthropic has introduced new safeguards for its largest Claude AI models (Opus 4 and 4.1), allowing them to end conversations in extremely rare cases of persistent, harmful user interactions—not to protect users, but to protect the AI itself. While the company emphasizes that it does not view Claude as sentient, it has launched a “model welfare” initiative to explore potential risks and low-cost protective measures in case such welfare matters in the future. The shutdown ability is only triggered after multiple failed redirection attempts or at the user’s request, and it excludes cases where users may be at risk of harming themselves or others.

Anthropic says this measure is experimental, designed for edge cases such as child exploitation or terrorism-related requests, and users will still be able to restart chats or branch from ended ones.

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How big tech got scammed by an 'AI'

Builder.ai raised $450M claiming to be AI-powered — turns out, it was mostly humans behind the curtain. Meanwhile, Duolingo got flamed for using too much AI. This video breaks down the absurd contradiction, the rise of “AI-washing,” and how fake it–till–you–make–it is still alive in startup land. Watch to see how investors keep falling for it 👀

🕶️ More videos here đź•¶ď¸Ź 

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From Italy to a Nasdaq Reservation

How do you follow record-setting success? Get stronger. Take Pacaso. Their real estate co-ownership tech set records in Paris and London in 2024. No surprise. Coldwell Banker says 40% of wealthy Americans plan to buy abroad within a year. So adding 10+ new international destinations, including three in Italy, is big. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.

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These companies just raised money

  1. đź’° Cohere raises $500M at a $6.8B valuation, bringing in new execs to scale enterprise AI tools.

  2. 🕵️ IVIX secures $60M Series B to expand its AI-powered financial fraud detection platform.

  3. 🚀 Boundless Ventures launches a $24M fund focused on early-stage AI startups in India.

  4. 🎬 Dashverse grabs $13M to fuel AI-generated episodic entertainment content.

  5. 🛠️ Pronto nails $11M for its on-demand home services marketplace.

  6. 🏡 Elivaas collects $10.4M to expand its luxury vacation rental platform.

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Duolingo AI-first backlash response

Photo by Aerps.com on Unsplash

Duolingo’s CEO pulled an “it’s not you, it’s the context” after a recent blowup over an AI-first memo, chalking up the backlash to a missing backstory rather than the tech shift itself. Turns out, going all-in on AI can stir more than just employee existential dread if leaders forget to share the playbook.

The bigger takeaway? As more digital startups pivot hard toward AI, internal communication is starting to matter almost as much as the actual technology. Founders betting the company on machine learning better make sure the humans on payroll don’t feel like they’re next up on the chopping block—otherwise, expect memo drama to become a recurring feature of the AI era.

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