🕶️ Are you guilty of AI-washing?

Six bullets of updates

1. 🤖 Gen Z's feelings on AI are mixed: 62% are worried about job loss, while 55% are excited about its potential.

2. 🤔 Is your company engaging in AI-washing? Rippling founder Parker Conrad suggests that 44% of AI claims are exaggerated.

3. 🔧 OpenAI now allows businesses to fine-tune ChatGPT’s GPT-4 model with custom data, a process that takes just an hour or two.

4. 🎥 YouTube has partnered with Shopify to compete with TikTok Shop, expanding e-commerce opportunities for millions of creators.

5. 📚 OpenAI has partnered with Condé Nast to train ChatGPT on its content, incorporating stories from The New Yorker and Vogue.

6. 🚨 The banks that loaned Musk $13 billion to buy Twitter are facing pressure as X encounters financial difficulties.

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Crypto Island: Balaji’s wild ride into technocapitalism

Former a16z investor Balaji Srinivasan has acquired a private island near Singapore to launch his new "Network School", which will focus on crypto, longevity, and the development of a "technocapitalist college town." This initiative is a significant step towards his vision of creating "network states", which are internet communities that secure physical locations and seek diplomatic recognition. Srinivasan's project has garnered support from prominent figures in the tech world, including Marc Andreessen and Vitalik Buterin, and is attracting interest from libertarian circles within Silicon Valley.

The 90-day program, set to begin in late September, will feature lectures on digital nomadism and meals designed by longevity expert Bryan Johnson. The school targets those who challenge traditional institutions and embrace ideas like Bitcoin's potential to surpass the Federal Reserve and AI's ability to deliver better judgments than conventional systems. While the long-term plans for the island remain unclear, Srinivasan's Network School is part of a broader trend of creating sovereign internet communities, following similar efforts like Buterin's Zuzalu in Montenegro. Read more!

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | August 28 | Webinar

2. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | September 4 | Webinar

3. Product-Led Summit | September 4 | Conference

4. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | September 11 | Webinar

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These companies just raised money

1. 📚 Story raises $83M at a $2.25B valuation to manage content IP in the AI era.

2. 🛠️ Trunk Tools secures $30M to enhance construction firms' efficiency by providing quick AI-driven document search solutions.

3. 🌍 The Rounds secures $24M in Series B funding to grow its eco-friendly delivery service and reach more households.

4. 🌱 BEV-C is raising a $25M climate fund to address climate change with cutting-edge technology.

5. 💬 SleekFlow secures $7M to advance its conversational AI platform and expand into Asian markets.

6. 💳 Andes STR raises $4M in a round led by Executive Venture Fund, bolstering the Latin American fintech landscape.

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Claude’s revenue rocket: $1M and counting, but ChatGPT Is still king

Anthropic's AI app, Claude, has reached a significant milestone, surpassing $1 million in gross mobile app revenue across iOS and Android in just 16 weeks. The U.S. market contributed nearly half of this revenue, according to data from Appfigures. Despite this achievement, Claude lags behind its top competitor, ChatGPT, in both downloads and revenue, ranking 95th in the Productivity category by downloads and 68th by revenue on iOS in the U.S.

While Claude's performance is modest compared to ChatGPT, which reached $1 million in revenue within three weeks, it still outpaced other AI app competitors like Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity, which took 19 and 22 weeks, respectively, to hit the same milestone. The U.S. remains Claude’s largest market for both downloads and revenue, followed by India, Japan, the U.K., and Germany.

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Budgeting a startup funding round