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🕶️ Instagram’s identity crisis & Tesla’s AI6 future

🕶️ Instagram’s identity crisis & Tesla’s AI6 future

Tesla’s big bet shifts to AI6 after Musk calls Dojo an evolutionary dead end.

Lucila Sarquis
August 12, 2025

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Elon has killed Tesla’s Dojo project, betting the future on AI6 instead, while AOL is finally pulling the plug on dial-up — yes, 163,000 people still use it. UK fintech is feeling the chill with a 30% funding drop, and Instagram’s pivot back to personal content hints at a social media identity crisis.

New video! What science says about a future with AI 🫢

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Eight bullets of updates

🚗 Elon Musk pulls the plug on Tesla's Dojo project, calling AI6 the future after determining the tech was an evolutionary dead end.
💼 Nvidia's CEO debunks rumors, saying he personally reviews staff bonuses for top 20 employees quarterly.
⚖ US court records hacked; further turmoil as Instagram hit by privacy backlash over map feature, data theft hits Google support.
📷 Instagram grapples with an identity crisis as it pivots back to personal content after 20% drop in user satisfaction scores.
🚙 Revel exits the ride-hail game, refocusing on selling off its fleet of bright-blue EVs after four years.
💷 UK fintech funding drops 30% in H1 2025 amid market volatility, despite government support.
🤖 Nozomi AI and YC team up for a 24-hour hackathon to drive AI innovation with developers hailing from over 30 countries.
🌐 Remember the sound of dial-up? AOL is finally unplugging it in 2025, with 163K users still relying on it.

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DC’s new side hustle: AI chip tax

Photo by Raúl Nájera on Unsplash

Nvidia and AMD just struck a deal with Uncle Sam: they’ll hand over 15% of revenue from sales of top-tier AI chips to China in exchange for licenses to sell in the region.

This isn’t just about balancing the US-China tech standoff—it’s a backdoor for DC to tax the next wave of supercomputing, sidestepping a full-on export ban without sacrificing all that lucrative demand.

For the chipmakers, it’s a bittersweet win: embrace unpredictable regulatory risk, or forfeit billions from China’s absolute hunger for AI hardware. The stakes go beyond margin math, since compliance sets a template for how tech will navigate volatile geopolitics in real time—think of it as the cost of admission in the AI arms race.

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What science says about a future with AI

What will your job look like in 2035? We explore three possible futures shaped by AI; one where work gets easier and better paid, one where nothing really changes, and one where things get worse. This video breaks down the data, the risks, and what needs to happen to make the best-case scenario a reality.

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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.

Invest for $2.90/Share

_{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

💊 Truemeds quadruples valuation to $400M by offering affordable generics, now serving 500K+ customers monthly.
🍲 Nigeria food delivery startup Chowdeck raises $9M to expand in Africa; serving 1.5M customers in 11 cities.
🔋 Vulcan Elements – US-based rare-earth magnet maker raised $65M to expand manufacturing and reduce reliance on China.
🛒 Graas AI Singapore-based ecommerce tech startup secured $9M in a round led by Tin Men Capital.

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Leaving at peak push: GitHub boss logs off

Photo by Roman Synkevych on Unsplash

Thomas Dohmke will leave at year’s end to “become a founder again” with GitHub’s leadership now reporting directly to multiple Microsoft execs instead of a new CEO. Dohmke departs amid record growth — 1B+ repos, 150M+ developers, and surging AI projects — but also rising competition from Google and Cursor in AI coding tools.