🤖 McKinsey claims AI is rewriting corporate revenues

McKinsey’s latest survey says 10–20% of large corporations boosted revenue by 10%+ thanks to generative AI. Half to two-thirds reported at least some gain.

🖱 Even “boring” industries like oil drilling or grocery chains supposedly saw jumps.

🖱 Marketing, the obvious use case, reported smaller growth than others.

🖱 At the low end, 10% gain at 10% of big business equals ~1% of US GDP.

Numbers sound spectacular, but the reality check is simple: surveys measure optimism more than accounting.

When managers round up answers to avoid looking clueless, research drifts far from reality.

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🧠 Bill Gates launches $1M Alzheimer’s AI Prize

Bill Gates has unveiled a $1M competition calling on researchers, engineers, and startups to use AI against Alzheimer’s disease.

The initiative is run through the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative, with finalists set to compete in Copenhagen in March 2026.

🖱 Alzheimer’s affects over 7M Americans today, a number expected to rise with longer lifespans
🖱 AI could accelerate research by spotting hidden patterns, biomarkers, and drug opportunities at scale
🖱 Gates’ personal drive comes after his father’s death from Alzheimer’s in 2020
🖱 Applications open now, semi-finalists will be announced in December

AI has the power to shift research from reactive to predictive, a chance to change the trajectory of one of medicine’s hardest challenges.

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🤖 Levels of company autonomy

This framework breaks down how organizations evolve from human-led software shops to fully autonomous AI-driven entities.

🖱 Levels 0–1: Today, most founders use AI as an assistant. ChatGPT for research, code helpers, or microtasks, but humans still make all decisions.

🖱 Level 2: Companies deploy hundreds of LLMs, guided by humans. AI boosts productivity, but final control remains human.

🖱 Levels 3–5: Over the next decade, AI starts making decisions itself, from handling 50%+ of workflows to running 90% of operations, and eventually building fully autonomous organizations.

The higher the level, the greater the scalability and lower the operating costs.

Progress is not linear - many companies may stall at levels 2–3 due to regulation, customer trust, or the need for human oversight in sensitive industries.

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🪙 a16z ramps up DC lobbying to $1.49M

Andreessen Horowitz is spending heavily in Washington, reporting $1.49M in federal lobbying so far this year, more than Sequoia, General Catalyst, and even its own trade group NVCA.

🖱 a16z’s spend is up from $950K in 2023 and $1.8M in 2024
🖱 Targets range from crypto and stablecoins to AI and defense policy
🖱 The firm now lobbies the National Security Council and defense bills, tying tech regulation to national security
🖱 Recently added ex–deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger as a senior advisor on AI, cyber, and defense

While other VCs mostly sit out formal lobbying, a16z is betting big that shaping regulation directly will pay off as it pushes into defense and “American Dynamism.”

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⚖️ Musk takes Apple & OpenAI to court

Elon Musk’s xAI has filed an antitrust lawsuit in Texas, accusing Apple and OpenAI of striking a deal that locks ChatGPT into iOS by default.

The claim:

Apple became a “gatekeeper,” handing OpenAI monopoly power inside its ecosystem.

🖱 Apple allegedly “gave up” on building its own AI and leaned fully on OpenAI
🖱 iPhone users get ChatGPT by default, with no built-in alternatives
🖱 Every Apple user interaction flows into OpenAI’s training data
🖱 App Store promotions favor ChatGPT, while Musk’s Grok is excluded despite ranking high
🖱 Musk argues this setup suppresses competition and harms rival AI projects

If the court agrees, the case could test whether bundling AI into operating systems is innovation, or anticompetitive gatekeeping.

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💡 An Wang built an empire on persistence

An Wang was the engineer-founder who turned a single breakthrough into a company that defined office computing. A Harvard-trained physicist, he patented pulse transfer memory, sold the rights to IBM, and used the momentum to build Wang Laboratories.

Before the PC era, his systems powered American offices and his philanthropy reshaped campuses and hospitals.

🖱 The pivotal invention: a memory register that underpins modern computing, monetized early to fund the next act

🖱 Company arc: from calculators and components to office computers and text-processing systems that owned the workflow

🖱 Scale: 30,000 employees and $3B+ in revenue at peak, with Wang machines across US offices

🖱 Playbook: build where work happens, integrate deeply into daily processes, then expand product by product

🖱 Missed turn: the platform shift to personal computers punished even the category leader

🖱 Legacy: a pioneer of computing and a major philanthropist who gave hundreds of millions to education and healthcare

🖱 Read: “Lessons: An Autobiography” by An Wang

The takeaway is simple. Genius opens the door. Persistence walks through it, ships relentlessly, and survives the next platform shift.

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📊 How Google makes its money

Alphabet still earns most of its revenue from ads, but the mix is shifting.

Google Cloud has tripled in five years and now makes up 14% of sales, while subscriptions and devices have doubled over the same period.

🖱 Ads remain the core driver of Alphabet’s business
🖱 Cloud is the fastest-growing arm, tripling in five years
🖱 Subscriptions and devices have doubled in revenue
🖱 Profit margins remain high, though below Microsoft (36%) and Meta (39%)

Alphabet is still one of the most profitable companies on the planet, but its future growth story is now tied as much to cloud and subscriptions as to ads.

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✈️ From cereal boxes to a $42B IPO — the story of Airbnb

In 2007, two broke design grads in San Francisco rented out their loft with inflatable mattresses and Pop-Tarts for breakfast. That scrappy idea, called Airbed and Breakfast, became Airbnb — a community “where anyone can feel at home.”

🖱 2008: Third co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk joined, and the platform went live during the Democratic National Convention — 80 bookings in a week.

🖱 With bookings stalling, the founders sold “Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCains” cereal boxes at $40 each, raising $30K — their first “funding round.”

🖱 2009: Y Combinator invested $20K, Sequoia added $585K, and the rebrand to Airbnb marked the shift from airbeds to full homes.

🖱 Over the next decade, nine funding rounds fueled explosive growth.

🖱 2020: Airbnb survived the COVID crash by pivoting to local travel and remote-work rentals. Instead of collapse, it went public at a $42B valuation.

Today Airbnb makes billions in quarterly revenue and $600M+ in profit.

The lesson: desperation can spark creativity, and persistence can turn airbeds and cereal into one of the biggest IPOs of the decade.

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🌐 Framer hits $2B valuation with new funding

Framer, the no-code website builder with over 500K monthly users, has raised $100M in a Series D led by Meritech and Atomico, pushing its valuation to $2B. The company is now targeting enterprise growth and AI-powered features.

🖱 Framer powers dynamic websites with built-in analytics and enterprise security
🖱 Customers include Miro, Perplexity, Scale AI, and 40% of Y Combinator’s latest batch
🖱 ARR has hit $50M, with $100M targeted for next year
🖱 The company has been break-even for the past year

From design-first tool to enterprise platform, Framer is positioning itself to run not just landing pages, but entire company websites.

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🍴 Trump “broke the Barrel”

Cracker Barrel’s logo rebrand turned into a culture war saga after conservatives, led by Trump, blasted the chain for going “woke.”

Under pressure, the company backtracked, restored its old logo and thanked the President for weighing in.

🖱 MAGA influencers framed it as a test case: “Go woke, lose money”
🖱 Trump allies claimed credit after executives called to confirm the reversal
🖱 Cracker Barrel also deleted its Pride page and scrubbed DEI mentions from its site
🖱 Conservative pundits declared “victory” and quickly issued new demands

A restaurant logo became a political battlefield, showing how fast companies can fold under online pressure.

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🚀 Naval on Elon Musk’s true drive

Naval Ravikant shared a story that changed how he sees Musk. It started with a clash between Elon and Bill Gates.

Bill Gates once shorted Tesla. Elon confronted him:

🗣️Elon: “Why would you short Tesla?”
🗣️Gates: “The math says it’s overvalued. I’ll profit on the short.”
🗣️Elon: “Profit? I thought you cared about climate change and saving the world?”

Elon walked away and never spoke to Gates again.

For Naval, that moment revealed Musk’s mindset:

🖱 Money is only a tool, never the mission
🖱 His audacious goals aren’t for show, he means them literally
🖱 He doesn’t want to be remembered as “the car guy” or even “the one who saved America” — he wants humanity in space

It’s not about credit or legacy.
For Musk, it’s about getting us to the stars in his lifetime.

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📉 First-time VCs hit a wall on second funds

Managers who raised debut funds in the boom years of 2021–2022 are now struggling to secure Fund II.

PitchBook data shows only 33% of 2021’s first-time managers and just 12% from 2022 have raised a second vehicle.

🖱 In 2021, first-time VCs raised a record $24.1B
🖱 Median time between funds used to be under 3 years
🖱 Now LPs concentrate on big firms, with 12 funds capturing over half of all capital in 2025
🖱 Emerging managers face LP pullback, economic uncertainty, and political headwinds in climate and energy

The result is a two-speed venture world. Big firms get bigger, while new managers risk stalling out, threatening the next generation of investor talent.

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💰 $1B Solana treasury in the works

Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital, and Jump Crypto are teaming up to raise $1B for a Solana-focused treasury, with Cantor Fitzgerald as lead banker and the Solana Foundation’s reported backing.

🖱 Would be the largest corporate SOL reserve, surpassing Upexi’s $400M holdings

🖱 Plan involves acquiring a public entity to run the treasury business

🖱 Other players like DeFi Development Corp and Bit Mining are also building SOL reserves

🖱 SOL trades near $200, up 6.6% in the past month

A billion-dollar treasury would cement Solana as a core institutional asset and mark a new phase of its post-FTX recovery.

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👩‍💻 Startup hiring in 2025

A new chart tracks the ratio of new hires to departures across 10 startup sectors. Green shows headcount growth, orange shows cuts. Back in early 2021, fintech had 4.2 hires for every exit.

Today the pattern looks different: most startups now follow “one out — one in.”

🖱 Leaner teams, less churn
🖱 More discipline on costs
🖱 Healthier ARR per employee

It’s a shift from hypergrowth to efficiency, startups aren’t chasing headcount, they’re squeezing more from every seat.

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📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: August 25–29, 2025

$255M raised across 30 projects this week, led by Rain ($58M) and M0 ($40M). Alongside, $1.53B in new digital asset treasury allocations were announced by B Strategy, Sharps Technology, and DeFi Development Corp. Avail acquired Arcana, while OKX and Unified Ventures launched $130M in fresh funds.

Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇

🖱 Rain ($58M, Sapphire, Dragonfly, Galaxy, Lightspeed Faction, Samsung Next)
Enterprise-grade infrastructure for stablecoin payments.

🖱 M0 ($40M, Polychain, Ribbit, Endeavor Catalyst, Pantera, Bain Crypto)
Universal platform for application-specific stablecoins.

🖱 aPriori ($20M, HashKey, Pantera, Big Brain, Primitive, Gate Ventures)
Order flow coordination layer for high-performance blockchains.

🖱 Hemi ($15M, YZi Labs, Republic, HyperChain, Big Brain, Crypto.com)
EVM-level programmability layer for Bitcoin.

🖱 The Clearing Company ($15M, USV, Coinbase, Variant, Haun, Compound)
Onchain, permissionless, and regulated prediction market.

🖱 MAGNE.AI ($10M, DuckDAO, Castrum, Becker Ventures, TBV)
AI + Web3 hardware project building decentralized smartphones.

🖱 Kira ($6.7M, Stellar, Blockchange, Credibly Neutral, Grit Capital)
AI-driven DeFi infra for embedded fintech products.

🖱 Metafyed ($5.5M, Stellar, Draper U Ventures, Cyberport, Zero2Launch)
Marketplace for tokenized real-world assets.

🖱 Credit Coop ($4.5M, Maven 11, Faction, Coinbase, TRGC, dlab)
Onchain credit protocol backed by cash flows.

🖱 Suzaku Network ($1.5M, Blizzard Fund, Avalanche Foundation, Yield Yak)
Restaking protocol on Avalanche.

Investor focus this week was on stablecoin infra, AI-powered DeFi, and RWA marketplaces, while treasuries and M&A kept reshaping the landscape.

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💰 Nvidia’s Q2 boom came from just two buyers

Nvidia posted a record $46.7B in revenue in Q2, up 56% year over year. But filings show how concentrated that success really is.

🖱 One customer brought in 23% of revenue
🖱 Another added 16%
🖱 Together, they made up 39% of the quarter’s sales
🖱 Four more customers contributed between 10 and 14% each

These are direct buyers like OEMs and system integrators, not the cloud giants themselves. Yet hyperscalers still drove half of Nvidia’s data center revenue, which was 88% of the total.

The picture is clear: Nvidia is riding the AI wave, but much of the ride depends on a small circle of very big spenders.

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⚡ The fall of Fisker: how an EV dream unraveled

Henrik Fisker wanted to build a Tesla rival, starting with the Ocean SUV. But from day one, cracks showed: missed production targets, faulty cars, and a scramble for cash. Within two years, the startup collapsed into bankruptcy.

🖱 2023: Fisker repeatedly cut production goals, sold debt to stay afloat, and ended the year aiming for just a quarter of its original forecast.

🖱 Early 2024: Sales lagged far behind promises, while the Ocean SUV triggered multiple federal safety probes over brakes, rollaways, and sudden power loss. Layoffs hit 15% of staff.

🖱 Spring 2024: Cash dwindled to $121M, production paused, and a potential Nissan rescue deal fell apart. NYSE suspended trading as the company lost track of millions in customer payments.

🖱 Summer 2024: More layoffs, unpaid vendors, a string of recalls, and asset disputes piled up. By June, Fisker filed for Chapter 11 with up to $1B in assets and half a billion in liabilities.

🖱 Fall 2024: The bankruptcy process turned chaotic: creditors battled over assets, the DOJ stepped in on recalls, and Fisker’s HQ was abandoned in “complete disarray.” Eventually, liquidation was approved, with 3,000 SUVs sold off at ~$14K each.

🖱 2025: Henrik Fisker quietly shut down his nonprofit, marking a quiet end to his second failed car venture.

The story of Fisker is a reminder that building an EV company isn’t just about design ambition.

Without flawless execution and solid foundations, even billions raised and star power cannot keep the wheels from coming off.

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📱 How Apple makes its money

Revenue growth came mainly from iPhones, Macs, and services, with a sales bump as customers rushed to upgrade before Trump’s tariffs took effect.

🖱 iPhone and Mac sales were the strongest drivers
🖱 Services continue to expand as a stable revenue stream
🖱 iPad and “other devices” declined, a segment where Apple hasn’t launched anything compelling for years

The picture is clear: Apple still thrives on its flagship products, but weaker categories show how dependent the company remains on its core hits.

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💶 Scramble makes investing in consumer brands simple

Scramble is a European platform that lets anyone back fast-growing consumer companies and earn from it - without the noise of stocks or daily market tracking.

Each month, users get a curated batch of companies, and investments are automatically diversified.

🖱 Founder-backed loans, disbursed in stages to reduce risk
🖱 Group A: monthly repayments, up to 12.4% annually
🖱 Group B: higher risk, up to 25% returns
🖱 Scramble co-invests up to 20% in every batch

✨ New users get €10 for signing up, plus €5 bonus for every €100 invested.

Positioned as a hands-off, lower-volatility way to grow capital, Scramble is betting on the appeal of consumer brands as a stable entry point for retail investors.