🕶️ Mechanize and Destroy?

Ten bullets of updates

1. 🗽 NYC investors say AI is thriving, OpenAI looks strong, and concerns about collapse are exaggerated; optimism dominated this year’s Tech Week discussions.

2. 🧘 A growing number of founders are learning to do less, stepping back from day-to-day tasks to focus on strategy, delegation, and sustainable growth.

3. 💊 Telehealth startup Outro helps users taper off antidepressants with medical oversight, tapping into growing demand for safer, structured mental health off-ramps.

4. 📬 Threads is finally testing a dedicated DM inbox, signaling Meta’s push to make the app a true Twitter alternative, not just a scrolling clone.

5. 🛡️ Anthropic’s CPO says startups can survive AI giants by focusing on speed, niche markets, and building trust, not by trying to outscale Big Tech.  

6. ⚱️ A UK startup is turning human ashes into reef structures to revive seabeds, blending climate tech with memorial services in a surprisingly scalable model.

7. 🧠 Sam Altman says next-gen AI will produce “novel scientific insights” by 2026; hinting at a future where models don’t just summarize, they discover.

8. 🌴 Kerala is seeing a startup boom driven by government funding, returnee talent, and strong infrastructure, turning the Indian state into an unexpected tech hub.

9. 💡 Entrepreneur rounded up 44 side hustle ideas — from flipping furniture to virtual tutoring — aimed at helping first-time founders start small and earn fast.

10.  🇪🇺 TechCrunch says it’s not pulling out of Europe: it’s doubling down, merging with Foundry to expand coverage and amplify global startup stories.

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🧠 The Startup That Wants to Automate Every Job

Most companies try to soften the blow when talking about AI and jobs. Mechanize doesn’t bother.

The San Francisco startup has a bold and unusually blunt goal: to fully automate all white-collar labor: from engineers and accountants to lawyers and even journalists. “We want to get to a fully automated economy, and make that happen as fast as possible,” said 29-year-old cofounder Tamay Besiroglu.

Mechanize is one of a new wave of AI companies pushing beyond tools and assistants to full job replacement. Their approach? Use reinforcement learning to train AI agents to complete complex, multi-step tasks — like writing code or managing projects — by simulating entire digital workplaces, from inboxes to Slack to IDEs.

Backed by investors like Stripe’s Patrick Collison and Google’s Jeff Dean, the team says they’re starting with software engineering but eventually aim to automate “nearly every responsibility a human could carry out at a computer.”

Some quick context:

• The founders estimate full automation is still 10–30 years away.

• They admit current models can’t yet handle complex, fuzzy jobs.

• And they offer no transition plan for displaced workers — just a vague hope that universal basic income will catch up.

Critics worry Mechanize’s pitch is all ambition, no empathy. The company is transparent about its intentions; but shows little concern for the societal fallout of making millions of jobs obsolete by design.

At least they’re being honest?

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What NOBODY Tells You About Selling a Startup

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These companies just raised money

1. 💾 Vast Data is reportedly targeting a $25B valuation in its next raise, betting big on its AI-ready storage platform as demand for infrastructure soars.

2. 🧾 Linear raised $82M at a $1.25B valuation to take on Atlassian; positioning its sleek, engineer-friendly platform as the future of product management.

3. 🏢 Glean hit a $7.2B valuation to expand its enterprise AI search tools — as companies race to organize internal knowledge with smarter, faster systems.

4. 💰 Omada Health’s IPO minted over $200M for early execs and investors; with insiders cashing out big as the digital health company hit the public markets.

5. ☢️ Proxima Fusion raised $140M to scale its stellarator tech, joining the growing pack of well-funded startups racing to make nuclear energy commercially viable.

6. 💳 Tebi, founded by Adyen’s ex-cofounder, raised $30M from CapitalG, aiming to simplify business banking with a modular, API-first approach.

7. 🌊 Bedrock raised $25M to map the seafloor with autonomous robots, aiming to modernize ocean exploration with faster, cheaper, and more detailed data.

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🍾🍷 A Mansion Full of People Planning Humanity’s Successor

Last week, about 100 AI insiders gathered at a $30M San Francisco mansion for something between a symposium and a salon. The theme? What happens after humanity ends.

The event — called Worthy Successor — was organized by entrepreneur Daniel Faggella and built around the idea that advanced AI shouldn’t just serve humans, but should evolve into something wiser and better suited to determine the future of life itself. The crowd included researchers from top AI labs, philosophers, founders, and enough references to Nietzsche and Spinoza to make it feel less like a policy summit, more like posthuman TEDx.

Three speakers took the mic:

• One warned that human values might be impossible to encode and that future AIs may need to seek “cosmic alignment” instead.

• Another questioned building AI without understanding consciousness, arguing we risk trusting something that can’t suffer, or enslaving something that can.

• Faggella closed by advocating for designing a conscious, evolving successor; a being that doesn’t just preserve human values, but discovers new ones.

No real policy talk, no risk frameworks, no governance roadmaps. Just a room full of people seriously discussing how to hand off civilization.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. Today! l Slidebean Webinar: Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Jun 12 l Online

2. Entrepreneur First Paris - Fall l Deadline: Jun 15 l France

3. Founder Institute Core Program l Deadline: Jun 22 l USA

4. Slidebean Webinar: Don't use YouTube for Startup Marketing l Jun 24 l Online

5. Entrepreneur First Bangalore - Fall l Deadline: Jun 29 l Bangalore

6. Slidebean Webinar: Financial Modeling Bootcamp l Jul 1 l Online

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

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