🕶️ Facebook's Midlife Crisis

OpenAI is reportedly working on a social platform

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Lucila Sarquis & Paula Echeverria
April 26, 2025

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In a shifting tech landscape, Facebook is aiming to win back teens, targeting 280M users by 2025, while OpenAI reportedly plans a new social platform for its 100M+ users. Revolut posts a record $1B profit and eyes global expansion, while Prince Harry supports youth-led initiatives focused on AI and social media safety.

Amid these moves, a new AI dataset, SHADES, reveals how technology could be spreading stereotypes across cultures.

Video pick: The REAL Cause of EVERY Financial Crisis

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Eight bullets of updates

  1. 📱 Facebook wants to be cool again—Zuckerberg is chasing 280M teen users by 2025.

  2. 🧠 OpenAI is reportedly working on a social platform to reinvent how its 100M+ users connect.

  3. 🕵️ Perplexity plans to launch its browser "Comet," tracking all user data for hyper-personalized ads.

  4. 🌍 Over 360 startups applied for the NN Social Innovation Award to tackle global well-being challenges with tech.

  5. 👑 Prince Harry funds youth-led initiatives around AI and social media safety.

  6. 💰 Revolut posts a record $1B profit in 2024 and plans to launch banks in the UK and Mexico to reach 100M users.

  7. 🏆 Apply to Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 for a shot at a $100K equity-free prize.

  8. 🐘 Trump's memecoin dinner invite sends prices up 60%—but $1.6M in trading fees reveal where the real profits lie.

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AI just can’t stop spreading old stereotypes

Source: Unsplash

AI models are continuing to spread harmful stereotypes across languages and cultures, according to Margaret Mitchell, AI ethics leader at Hugging Face. Mitchell helped develop the SHADES dataset, designed to test AI models for bias in multiple languages using human translations, rather than relying on machine-generated ones.

The dataset highlights how generative AI often amplifies stereotypes that originated in English-speaking, Western contexts, sometimes even justifying them with fabricated scientific claims. Despite efforts to mitigate these biases, deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes remain a significant challenge in AI development, raising concerns about their global impact. Read more!

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The REAL Cause of EVERY Financial Crisis

Even NYC’s iconic “pizza principle” — where a slice matched the price of a subway ride — has broken down. But this goes beyond pizza. Global turmoil, inflation, and a looming financial crisis are reshaping everything. Crypto boomed, then crashed. Startups are collapsing, jobs are vanishing, and for many, even a slice feels out of reach.

So how did we get here — and who's to blame?
Find out in this episode of Company Forensics.

.🕶️ Subscribe for more videos! 🕶️ 

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From idea to exit: Lessons from SaaS founders who’ve done it

Why do some SaaS ideas take off while others stall? In this candid webinar, founders and experts from Podscan and Paddle share real stories and hard-earned lessons—from validating early traction to choosing between bootstrapping or VC, and scaling through smart tactics.

It’s not a pitch—it’s founder therapy.

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These companies just raised money

  1. 🏢 Flow, Adam Neumann's comeback play, raises $100M—valuation hits $2.5B. IPO buzz intensifies.

  2. 🤖 Manus AI grabs $75M from Benchmark, eyes U.S. expansion with a $500M valuation.

  3. 💸 Flex acquires Maza for $40M, merging fintech services for 250K small business owners as M&A surges.

  4. 🚀 Isembard secures $9M to reshuffle precision manufacturing in the West with a network of local factories.

  5. 🌱 RepAir slashes carbon capture costs to $70–$80/ton with battery-inspired tech, backed by a $15M Series A.

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AI’s power hunger: from chips to city-sized electric bills

Source: Unsplash

A new study by Georgetown, Epoch AI, and Rand reveals that AI data centers are expanding rapidly, with projections showing they could soon house millions of chips, cost hundreds of billions, and use as much power as a major city. Analyzing 500+ projects from 2019–2025, the report finds computational performance, capital costs, and energy needs all doubling yearly. By 2030, a top data center may require 9 GW — as much as nine nuclear reactors — highlighting serious infrastructure and environmental challenges. Major players like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are already investing heavily, with OpenAI eyeing $500 billion for new builds.

Yet concerns are rising over environmental and economic impacts. Data centers are straining power grids, increasing reliance on non-renewables, consuming vast water resources, and eroding state tax revenues via incentives. Even if growth slows, the scale of AI infrastructure demands urgent attention to sustainability.

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