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🕶️ The $50 AI allowance and ChatGPT’s new attitude

Water-guzzling prompts, $50 AI budgets, and study sessions with your chatbot.

Author

Lucila Sarquis
July 08, 2025

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AI’s glow-up comes at a cost—each prompt sipping water like a 16-oz bottle đź’§ While Brex hands engineers $50/month to play with AI tools 🛠️, ChatGPT is ditching its know-it-all phase for a “study buddy” era. And over in social, Threads is creeping up on X’s user count 📱

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Nine bullets of updates

  1. đź’§ AI’s environmental footprint: one prompt can use as much water as a 16-oz bottle every 5–50 interactions.

  2. đźš– Waymo is testing robotaxis in Philadelphia and NYC, with expansion in sight; the company already operates in LA, Phoenix, and more.

  3. 📱 Threads is nearing 115M daily mobile users, catching up to X’s 132M. Could Meta’s social bet reshape the landscape?

  4. 🛠️ Brex revamped its procurement process, giving engineers a $50/month budget to explore AI tools during this fast-evolving tech wave.

  5. 🎮 Epic Games has settled its antitrust case with Samsung over app store practices, ending litigation from last September.

  6. 📉 Only 20% of people trust leadership today. Gallup’s Jim Harter shares strategies to improve engagement and restore confidence.

  7. 🇺🇸 TikTok is prepping a new U.S. app ahead of a potential sale deadline; the current version is set to shut down in March 2026.

  8. 🇪🇺 Independent publishers have filed an EU antitrust complaint against Google’s AI Overviews, citing traffic and revenue losses.

  9. đź“„ Researchers have embedded hidden AI prompts into arXiv papers—17 instruct AI to provide only positive peer reviews.

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AI’s not-so-secret ingredient

The data industry is undergoing rapid consolidation as companies like Databricks and Salesforce acquire smaller players to strengthen their AI capabilities, aiming to fill critical gaps in the enterprise data stack. With over $300 billion invested in data startups over the past few years, many of these firms now face limited funding options and see acquisition as a more viable path than IPOs.

The central belief driving this trend is that AI success hinges on high-quality, well-integrated data infrastructure—yet questions remain about whether legacy data companies can adapt fast enough to meet the demands of a post-ChatGPT world. As market dynamics evolve, merging AI innovation with robust data management may become essential for delivering real enterprise value.

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How to scale a startup team

When you start a company there is really no guide, handbook on how to scale your team. All companies are different, all companies need to scale differently- but most importantly with startups, things move so fast that your scale strategy needs to be that flexible. So we want to share some of the lessons we’ve learned.

🕶️ Watch More Videos Here đź•¶ď¸Ź 

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Run IRL ads as easily as PPC

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Investor Data Room Checklist

An investor data room is a storage space, digital or physical, where companies store information relevant to due diligence. We've compiled a FREE Template/Checklist of all the items your data room should include and resources and tools for obtaining them.

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From know-it-all to study buddy: ChatGPT’s new era?

OpenAI is quietly testing a new ChatGPT feature called “Study Together”, aimed at transforming the chatbot into a more interactive educational tool. Instead of providing direct answers, the feature reportedly encourages users to think by prompting them with questions — a possible response to tools like Google’s LearnLM. While details are scarce and OpenAI hasn’t confirmed a public rollout, speculation is growing about future capabilities like group study chats. As ChatGPT becomes increasingly embedded in classrooms — for both learning and less-than-ethical shortcuts — this feature could help shift the narrative toward productive, accountable use in education.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

  1. TOMORROW! Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Jul 9 l Online

  2. Slidebean Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Jul 10 l Online

  3. Startupbootcamp | Energy & Sustainability | Deadline: Aug 10 | South Africa

  4. Startupbootcamp | Health & LifeScience | Deadline: Aug 10 | Netherlands

  5. Antler Canada | Deadline: Sept 29 | Canada

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