🕶️ Ghosted by Nike? The $5M NFT drama

Startups and giants like Amazon race to develop quantum chips

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Paula Echeverria & Lucila Sarquis
April 29, 2025

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Tech is racing ahead—from Alice & Bob raising $104M for quantum chips to IBM pouring $150B into U.S. innovation. OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a shopping powerhouse, while Alibaba's Qwen 3 models challenge AI leaders. But not all headlines are wins: Nike’s ghosted NFT buyers are fighting back in court, and a rare atmospheric glitch left millions powerless across Europe. In a world sprinting toward the future, even giants can trip.

Video pick: NEVER outsource your Minimum Viable Product

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Eleven bullets of updates

  1. 🔬 Startups and giants like Amazon race to develop quantum chips; Alice & Bob recently raised $104M to advance their cat qubits.

  2. 🛒 OpenAI enhances ChatGPT with shopping tools, enabling over a billion weekly searches for tailored product finds.

  3. 💻 IBM commits $150B to boost U.S. presence, with $30B earmarked for mainframe and quantum research over the next five years.

  4. ⚡ Spain, Portugal, and France hit by a major power outage caused by a rare atmospheric phenomenon, leaving millions affected.

  5. 🎙️ Spotify paid podcast creators over $100M in 2023, boosting listener growth by 45% through its Partner Program.

  6. 📖 Julie Wainwright's memoir reveals the highs and lows of taking two companies public, including a notable $22M rise.

  7. 🚀 Latin America boasts a growing cohort of startups, with some like Rappi eyeing IPOs amid valuations over $5B.

  8. 🤖Alibaba unveils Qwen 3, a new family of AI models with up to 235B parameters, directly challenging Google and OpenAI's leading technologies.

  9. 📚 Top bookmarking apps now offer features like AI tagging, unlimited tags, and even 10GB uploads to help organize digital chaos.

  10. 🚗 Subscription car features fuel surveillance concerns, with police gaining access to enhanced vehicle data starting in 2024.

  11. 🛍️Phoebe Gates, daughter of Bill Gates, launched 'Phia', an AI-based sustainable shopping app—built without tapping into her dad's $108B fortune.

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Nike ghosted its NFT buyers — now they're haunting back

Source: Unsplash

Nike is facing a class-action lawsuit filed in New York federal court, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities through its RTFKT NFT division and then abandoning the project, leading to a collapse in NFT values. Lead plaintiff Jagdeep Cheema alleges that buyers would never have invested if they had known Nike would "pull the rug out from under them." Nike had acquired RTFKT in 2021 to push into digital fashion and collectibles but quietly shut down the division in December 2024, claiming innovation would continue elsewhere. The plaintiffs seek over $5 million in damages, arguing Nike violated consumer protection laws across multiple states.

This lawsuit highlights the ongoing legal uncertainty around NFTs and whether they should be regulated like stocks or bonds. As the NFT market continues to struggle after its 2021-2022 boom, many high-profile collections have plummeted in value, leaving buyers feeling duped. Nike has not yet commented on the allegations, but legal experts suggest the case could set important precedents for how companies are held accountable when digital asset projects collapse.

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NEVER outsource your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

When launching a company, it's crucial to assemble the right team. Developers play a pivotal role in this process. While some may opt for outsourcing development work, it often falls short. Check out this video, where I delve into why this approach doesn't cut it 🕶️ Subscribe for more videos! 🕶️ 

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Attention AI enthusiasts: This podcast is for you.

In This New Way, a new podcast by Fellow, Aydin Mirzaee invites leaders to share their screens and give demos of how they’re building internal tools and reinventing work with AI.

No theory, no fluff – just tactical, actionable insights from those leading the charge.

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These companies just raised money

  1. 🏦 Volution launches a $100M fund to support UK fintech amid a 44% drop in Series A funding in 2024.

  2. 🐛 Lightrun secures $70M to tackle code bugs using AI, as developers ship more code but bugs become increasingly costly.

  3. ♻️ Glacier raises $16M to expand its AI-powered recycling robots, aiming to tackle 3.8 billion tons of waste by 2050.

  4. 🎨 Cheehoo secures $10M led by Greycroft to bolster AI-driven animation, offering cost-effective tools for creators.

  5. 🏡 Sprive secures £5.5M (around $7M USD) to help UK homeowners pay off mortgages faster, saving £10K on average!

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Slidebean Revenue Data

Mistakes were made as we grew Slidebean, but those mistakes shaped the lessons that helped us thrive. The journey wasn’t just about surviving—it was about learning and evolving.

To give you an honest glimpse into what growth really looks like, we’re sharing our actual financial numbers from the formative years of Slidebean. Download them now and see the ups, downs, and everything in between that built the company we are today.

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The smartphone story isn’t over yet…

Uber did it to taxis, Airbnb to hotels, & now Mode is doing it to the $500B smartphone industry.

They’ve turned smartphones from an expense into an income stream - invest before their price changes.

*An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur. Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com.
*The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research.

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Oops, I leaked it again: tech fails from the top

Source: Unsplash

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sparked a digital security scandal after mistakenly leaking classified military plans via unsecured Signal chats, even exposing them to unauthorized contacts like his own family. His blunders echo broader government tech mishaps, from military bases being revealed on Strava to reporters easily finding Joe Biden’s Venmo account.

Despite advances in encrypted communication, human error remains a major vulnerability. As shown when Spanish media caught Catalan officials’ private texts on camera, no technology can fully protect against careless behavior.

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