🕶️ Less screen, more life?

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Seven bullets of updates

1. 🏙️ SF mayor courts tech CEOs, asking what it’ll take to bring them back to the city—cleaner streets, better schools, and more innovation made the wishlist.

2. 🚗 Waymo may use interior camera data to train generative AI and serve ads—raising fresh concerns about privacy in autonomous rides.

3. 🐦 Bluesky faces backlash after suspending parody accounts, sparking debate over moderation and free speech on the decentralized platform.

4. 🗣️ Pyannote lands seed funding to scale its voice recognition tech—pitch deck reveals its play to become the Whisper of Europe.

5. 🐘 Musk pushes to make X Trump’s megaphone again, courting the president to post directly—and exclusively—on the platform.

6. 🧊 OTHERSHIP’s sauna and ice bath hotspot becomes the latest wellness obsession for NYC’s tech crowd, blending biohacking with networking.

7. 🤖 Meta denies claims it juiced LLaMA 4’s benchmark scores, as rivals question the model’s real-world performance and transparency.

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🌍 AI Power Rankings Are In—And the U.S. Is Still King

The latest Stanford AI Index just dropped, and it's clear: the U.S. is still dominating the AI race—but with a twist. While American companies lead in publishing top-tier AI models (61% of them, to be exact), much of the foundational research now comes from the open-source community, not academia.

The report also highlights something more uncomfortable: AI is getting more expensive and more closed-off. Training cutting-edge models costs millions, which means only the biggest players can stay in the game. And guess who’s footing the bill for all that compute power? The private sector now funds three times as much AI research as governments.

Meanwhile, China is catching up fast in adoption, and Europe is pushing ahead on regulation—but nobody’s really slowing down. The arms race continues, and the gap between countries (and companies) is getting wider.

This is a reminder that whoever builds the smartest AI, sets the rules.

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The Billionaires' Plan to Replace Democracy

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These companies just raised money

1. 📊 SignalFire raises over $1B as LPs double down on data-driven VC bets, backing the firm’s AI-powered approach to early-stage investing.

2. 💳 Addi secures a $70M credit line from Goldman Sachs and Fasanara Capital to expand its BNPL services across Latin America.

3. 🎬 AI video startup Moonvalley quietly raises $43M, per SEC filing—fueling its push to compete in the generative content arms race.

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🧠 A Dumb Phone That’s Smarter Than It Looks

While AI goes hyperdrive, some people just want their brains back. Enter the Light Phone III, a minimalist phone designed to do less—no social feeds, no browser, no doomscrolling. Just calls, texts, and a bit of navigation. It’s a $799 bet against brain rot.

The team behind Light Phone says their device isn't about nostalgia—it’s a rebellion. Against distraction. Against algorithmic manipulation. Against the idea that more tech = better life.

And guess what? They’re selling out.

In a world obsessed with smarter, faster, and more addictive, this little device is a reminder: sometimes innovation means knowing when to stop.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | April 10 | Online 

2. Founders’ Mixer for Women Led Startups. | April 12 | Bengaluru

3. Startup Grind Conference 2025 | April 19-30 | USA

4. Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator | Deadline: April 28 | USA

5. Startup Battlefield 200 | Deadline: June 9 | Global

6. Entrepreneur First London - Summer | Deadline: July 1 | UK

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