🗣️ Naval Ravikant: “The future will be almost all startups”

“I firmly believe that the efficient size of a company is shrinking very rapidly, and so the future will be almost all startups.”

In the clip below from a 2012 interview, Naval speculates that information technology will reverse the centralizing force of economies of scale following the Industrial Revolution.

“I think the contract work trend is going to increase, and I think the size of your average company is going to decrease. I think we’re going to see more and more billion dollar businesses built by four or five people, and it’ll stay at that.”

He doesn’t think we’ll see many more companies like Facebook or Google with tens of thousands of employees:

“I think any entrepreneur worth their salt could today build Facebook with a few hundred people… Facebook and Google are in the situation that large companies end up in where the founders know that 80% of the people are not really needed, they just don’t know which 80%.”

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🎥 New Year’s Intensive 2/6, movies and series about venture

A short watchlist to better understand how venture really works: incentives, negotiations, risk, hyper-growth, and the mistakes that break companies.

🖱 Something Ventured: traces the birth of venture capital in the U.S., telling the stories behind Apple, Intel, Genentech, and Cisco and the investors who backed them before markets existed, showing how conviction in the unknown creates entire industries.

🖱 Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber: dramatizes Uber’s rise and Travis Kalanick’s fall, revealing how aggressive scaling, founder power, investor pressure, and regulation collide when growth becomes the only metric.

🖱 The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley: dissects the Theranos scandal, showing how charisma and narrative replaced due diligence and allowed nearly $900M to be raised without a viable product.

🖱 The Social Dilemma: explores how platform algorithms shape user behavior at massive scale, a critical lens for venture and product investors evaluating long-term impact and hidden risks.

🖱 The Playlist: tells Spotify’s origin from multiple perspectives founders, engineers, lawyers, and industry players illustrating how product vision, regulation, and business strategy evolve together.

🖱 WeCrashed: follows WeWork’s rapid ascent and collapse, highlighting how storytelling, easy capital, and weak governance can mask broken unit economics until the moment of truth.

🖱 Silicon Valley: offers a satirical but painfully accurate view of startup life, from accelerators and pitches to term sheets, pivots, and constant pressure from VCs to grow faster.

These films and series show venture not as a straight path to scale, but as a system of bets, incentives, and human decisions where speed creates opportunity, and unchecked belief creates failure.

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💰 Nvidia takes a $5B position in Intel as the chip wars intensify

After years of missteps and massive capital burn, Intel just gained a powerful ally without handing over control.

🖱 214.7M shares acquired: The transaction was completed via a private placement at $23.28 per share, a price set back in September by Jensen Huang.

🖱 Regulatory green light: US competition authorities cleared the investment in early December, removing antitrust overhang.

🖱 Capital at a critical moment: The cash injection strengthens Intel’s balance sheet while it pushes through an expensive manufacturing overhaul.

🖱 Strategic optionality: Nvidia secures long-term influence and supply-chain flexibility rather than operational ownership.

🖱 Market reaction was muted: Nvidia stock slipped 1.3% premarket, while Intel barely moved relief, not euphoria.

🖱 Valuation discipline: The entry came after a major reset, capping downside while preserving asymmetric upside.

🖱 Industry signal: This is power without control, shaping outcomes through capital instead of consolidation.

🖱 Risk imbalance: For Nvidia, it’s a small bet; for Intel, it’s a lifeline.

One side bought leverage, the other bought time.

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🔥 Nvidia just announced its next-generation AI chip, called Rubin.

It is 5x more powerful than the previous Blackwell chip. Jensen Huang is unstoppable.

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🔔DeepMind partners with Boston Dynamics to build smarter robots

The two companies are joining forces to develop robots based on the Atlas platform.

Boston Dynamics will focus on the physical systems and dynamic control, while DeepMind will integrate Gemini Robotics to provide reasoning and planning capabilities.

A collaboration that combines elite hardware with advanced AI.

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🧠 China quietly freezes Nvidia H200 buying as AI strategy recalibrates

Beijing has asked some domestic tech companies to pause purchases of Nvidia’s H200 AI processors, signaling a temporary brake while authorities weigh next steps on access to top-tier U.S. compute hardware.

🖱 The instruction appears informal but coordinated, aimed at preventing a rush to lock in U.S. chips before a clearer policy line is drawn.

🖱 H200 accelerators are among the most sought-after tools for large-scale model training, making them strategically sensitive rather than just commercial imports.

🖱 The move aligns with China’s broader push to reduce reliance on foreign semiconductors and steer demand toward homegrown AI chips.

🖱 Nvidia had seen strong inbound interest from Chinese buyers after export pathways reopened, interpreting orders as a signal of regulatory tolerance.

🖱 Rising uncertainty has already changed deal mechanics, with stricter payment terms reflecting the risk of sudden policy shifts.

🖱 The episode underscores how AI hardware is now treated less like a product and more like critical infrastructure.

For Nvidia, China remains a massive opportunity but one where political timing increasingly matters as much as performance per watt.

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📚 Global accounting exams return to test centres as cheating fears rise

The world’s biggest professional accounting organisation will end at-home testing from March, forcing candidates back into exam halls after concluding that digital supervision can no longer keep pace with misconduct.

🖱 The shift follows years of pandemic-era remote testing that kept qualification pipelines open during lockdowns.

🖱 Leadership says advances in generative AI have made it far easier to bypass online monitoring systems.

🖱 The move comes after repeated integrity breaches across the profession, with multiple Big Four firms penalised worldwide over staff exam misconduct.

🖱 Regulators in the UK and elsewhere have warned that violations remain widespread despite tighter controls.

🖱 Some students say remote exams were essential for accessibility, citing pregnancy, distance, and mobility constraints.

🖱 Others admit AI tools can already solve questions from photos taken during online assessments.

🖱 Despite the crackdown, the body acknowledges that dishonesty also occurs in physical exam rooms just with lower scalability.

🖱 The policy change coincides with a redesign of the core qualification to emphasise AI, data, and real-world judgement over rote testing.

As AI reshapes the profession, the irony is clear: accountants are being trained for an automated future using increasingly old-school exams.

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🔒 The venture investor toolkit

These are the platforms relied on for sourcing startups, validating signals, and running fast venture analysis.

🖱 For early discovery, F6S is useful for spotting startups at accelerator and pre-seed stage before they show up elsewhere.

🖱 AngelList works as a live map of startup activity, combining company profiles, fundraising history, and hiring momentum.

🖱 StartUs Insights helps track emerging technologies and cluster startups by niche rather than hype cycle.

🖱 On verification, Clay automates background checks on founders, customers, and online traction using public data.

🖱 Valuer.ai provides quick, model-driven startup valuations based on comparable markets and trend signals.

🖱 PitchBook Instant is useful for rapid market context and comps when speed matters more than depth.

🖱 For analytics, CB Insights delivers structured views on sectors, deal flow, and forward-looking market intelligence.

🖱 Crunchbase remains a dependable baseline for tracking companies, investors, and funding timelines.

🖱 PitchBook offers the deepest coverage for venture, M&A, IPOs, and institutional capital flows.

Strong tools don’t replace intuition, they shorten the search, reduce blind spots, and let investors focus on judgment instead of data hunting.

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🛡 Zcash slides as founding engineers stage collective exit

The privacy-oriented digital asset fell around 15% in a day, wiping out roughly $1.2B in valuation, after the full staff of its primary development outfit resigned amid a leadership dispute.

🖱 The walkout followed escalating friction between protocol builders and trustees at a nonprofit responsible for oversight.

🖱 The development group was set up in 2015 to accelerate progress on the zero-knowledge network and has shaped its direction for nearly a decade.

🖱 Former chief Josh Swihart said trustees drifted away from the original purpose, arguing revised work conditions made meaningful contribution impossible.

🖱 Multiple trustees were named publicly, turning an internal disagreement into an unusually transparent ecosystem rupture.

🖱 Despite the shake-up, the departing engineers say the network itself continues to function normally.

🖱 The group is now establishing a separate venture to carry on development while insulating its work from governance risk.

🖱 Traders reacted immediately, underlining how coordination breakdowns still matter even in decentralized systems.

🖱 The sell-off comes after a dramatic prior rally, when the asset climbed nearly eightfold from early-year lows to above $500.

When ideals of decentralization meet real-world control structures, price action often becomes the referee.

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✈️ Defense names whipsaw after Trump floats historic military spending

Shares across the arms sector swung sharply, first sliding and then ripping higher, after Donald Trump paired threats against shareholder payouts with a proposal for an unprecedented $1.5T US defense budget.

🖱 Late Wednesday, major contractors reversed after-hours losses once Trump publicly backed a massive expansion in military funding.

🖱 Early selling was triggered by comments warning that dividends and repurchases would be blocked until manufacturers speed up weapons deliveries.

🖱 Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris rebounded strongly, while General Dynamics, RTX, Boeing, and Huntington Ingalls followed with smaller advances.

🖱 European suppliers joined the rally, pushing companies like BAE Systems to multi-month highs as investors extrapolated higher global demand.

🖱 The proposed 2027 allocation would represent a ~66% increase from the 2026 authorization, framing defense as a top national priority.

🖱 Trump argued production timelines are lagging, urging new factories and attacking executive compensation as excessive.

🖱 The payout restrictions were formalized via executive order, though legal authority over private capital decisions remains uncertain.

🖱 The volatility comes amid heightened geopolitical tension, which has already lifted defense and energy assets in recent sessions.

Political pressure and spending promises colliding turned defense shares into a real-time referendum on Washington’s mood.

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🧑‍⚖️ Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI set for jury trial in March

A California federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its leadership will proceed to a jury trial scheduled for March 2026, rejecting motions from OpenAI to dismiss the case before trial.

🖱 Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and exited in 2018, claims the company misled him about sticking to its original nonprofit mission and improperly shifted to a for-profit orientation, particularly through governance decisions and big commercial deals.

🖱 In filings, he alleges his early contributions including roughly $38 million were made with the understanding the group would remain dedicated to public-benefit AI, and he now seeks damages tied to what he describes as “ill-gotten gains” from that shift.

🖱 The judge determined there is enough disputed factual evidence on key points including what assurances were made about nonprofit commitments that a jury should decide rather than the judge throwing the case out early.

🖱 OpenAI denies the claims and calls the lawsuit baseless, while Musk’s team said they look forward to presenting their case.

This decision moves the high-profile dispute into an adversarial courtroom phase with both sides preparing for what could be a rare test of founding mission versus corporate evolution in the AI industry.

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🔒 Google has officially kicked off the “Gemini era” in Gmail.

For free users, two AI features are rolling out:

• AI summaries that condense long email threads into quick, readable overviews.
• “Help Me Write”, which helps generate longer emails based on a prompt or topic.

Paid subscribers get a more powerful upgrade: the ability to search their inbox by chatting in natural language, instead of relying on keywords and filters.

The rollout has started in the US, with more countries coming soon.

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⚠️ GameStop is closing stores while its CEO chases a $35B payday.

The company kicked off 2026 by shutting hundreds of US locations. Employees say many stores got just days of notice, sometimes with closure signs taped directly to the doors. Even profitable stores weren’t spared.

At the same time, the board approved a performance package that could award CEO Ryan Cohen up to $35 billion in stock options. The catch: GameStop would need to grow its market cap from ~$9.5B to $100B and deliver $10B in cumulative earnings.

Workers describe empty shelves, rushed shutdowns, and few transfer options. Corporate leadership talks about growth and transformation.

The contrast is stark and it’s saying more than any press release.

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⚠️$4B OpenAI stake surfaces as Musk lawsuit reopens Altman ouster

Court filings in Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI revealed internal emails suggesting co-founder Ilya Sutskever held a vested equity stake worth roughly $4B as of late 2023, adding a new financial dimension to the governance fight.

🖱 The disclosure comes from correspondence between OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap and Microsoft executives, entered into evidence.

🖱 The emails date to November 2023, during the brief period when Sam Altman was fired and Microsoft was preparing contingency plans.

🖱 At the time, Satya Nadella was ready to hire Altman and absorb OpenAI staff, with CTO Kevin Scott publicly pledging to match compensation for any employees who joined.

🖱 Lightcap estimated a full employee tender offer would cost $25B excluding Sutskever, and $29B including him, implying a $4B vested stake.

🖱 The figure reflects vested equity only; the size of Sutskever’s unvested options is not specified in the correspondence.

🖱 The size of the stake surprised observers, given OpenAI’s unusual nonprofit–for-profit hybrid structure and prior assumptions about founder economics.

🖱 As a result, Sutskever is expected to be called again to clarify both his role in Altman’s dismissal and his precise financial interest.

🖱 The revelation strengthens arguments that the 2023 boardroom crisis involved not just safety and governance concerns, but extraordinary personal financial stakes.

What looked like a philosophical split over AI safety is starting to resemble a $4B incentive problem hiding in plain sight.

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📚Books

Even if you’re not investing yet, reading about investing matters. These books build one of the core financial skills: how to think about capital, risk, and time. 10 books for beginners and advanced investors:

🖱 Super Founders — Ali Tamaseb: An analysis of hundreds of unicorns, breaking down what distinguishes the biggest outcomes and standout founders.

🖱 The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby: Why venture capital depends on extreme, asymmetric wins and how legendary funds were built.

🖱 High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil: A practical guide to scaling after product–market fit: hiring, fundraising, and managing hypergrowth.

🖱 The Algebra of Wealth — Scott Galloway: A clear framework for building wealth through concentration, time, discipline, and diversification.

🖱 Mango Millionaire — Radhika Gupta: A modern personal finance book focused on habits, mindset, and everyday money decisions.

🖱 Investing 101 — Michele Cagan: A beginner-friendly introduction to stocks, bonds, ETFs, and IPOs.

🖱 Just Keep Buying — Nick Maggiulli: A data-backed case for consistency, patience, and ignoring short-term market noise.

🖱 Stock Market 101 — Michele Cagan: More tactical guidance on how markets work and how to start investing in stocks.

🖱 The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing: The classic playbook for low-cost, long-term index investing.

🖱 Rule No. 1 Investing — Phil Town: A fundamentals-driven approach to finding quality businesses without constant market watching.

Reading won’t make you rich overnight but it will compound how you think for decades.

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🇨🇳 China quietly captured the humanoid robot market in 2025

While headlines suggest a coming humanoid robot boom, the actual sales picture is still small and overwhelmingly Chinese.

🖱 According to Omdia, only 13,318 humanoid robots were sold globally in 2025, far below the hype cycle.

🖱 Chinese manufacturers took the entire top-5 by unit sales, locking up nearly all commercial deployments.

🖱 AgiBot led the market with 5,168 units, followed by Unitree Robotics (4,200) and UBTech (1,000).

🖱 Leju Robotics and Engine AI rounded out the top-5, though neither disclosed exact shipment numbers.

🖱 The demand is largely domestic, driven by factory automation, service pilots, and aggressive state-backed experimentation.

🖱 At CES 2026, Chinese humanoids dominated the floor playing table tennis, cleaning, doing martial arts signaling confidence and manufacturing readiness more than real-world scale.

🖱 Meanwhile, the most famous Western humanoid developer, Boston Dynamics, has almost no sales despite a decade of viral demos.

🖱 This year, Boston Dynamics finally unveiled a commercial Atlas aimed at factories, capable of lifting 30–50 kg, swapping its own batteries, and operating 24/7.

🖱 Hyundai, which owns Boston Dynamics, plans to deploy Atlas in its own factories but for now, the public demo remains animation-only.

🖱 The contrast is stark: China is shipping imperfect robots today, while the US is still polishing perfect robots for tomorrow.

Humanoid robotics is no longer a question of who has the best demos it’s becoming a race about who’s willing to manufacture early, ship at low margins, and learn in public.

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🇺🇸 OnlyFans creators are redefining America’s “extraordinary talent” visa

A US visa category once designed for elite artists and performers is now being increasingly used by influencers and OnlyFans creators, reshaping how “extraordinary ability” is interpreted.

🖱 According to The Guardian, social media influencers and OnlyFans models now dominate O-1 visa applications, a program historically reserved for top-tier actors, musicians, and cultural figures.

🖱 The O-1 visa requires proof of “extraordinary ability,” but in practice this is increasingly demonstrated through follower counts, engagement metrics, and platform earnings rather than traditional awards or critical acclaim.

🖱 Immigration lawyers report a sharp rise in applications from digital creators over the past few years, accelerated by the pandemic-era boom in online content businesses.

🖱 Some applicants earn five- or six-figure annual incomes from platforms like OnlyFans, which are now being accepted as evidence of commercial success and distinction.

🖱 Approval numbers for O-1 visas have grown steadily over the past decade, even as other work visa pathways remain capped or politically constrained.

🖱 Critics argue the trend dilutes the original intent of the visa, replacing artistic excellence with algorithm-driven popularity.

🖱 Supporters counter that digital creators are legitimate cultural and economic actors, exporting American-style media influence globally and generating real revenue.

🖱 For many creators, the O-1 has become one of the few viable immigration routes left especially as H-1B visas remain lottery-based and highly restricted.

🖱 As one lawyer put it, this is simply “the American dream, updated for the internet age.”

What used to reward Oscars and Grammys is now rewarding reach, monetization, and attention turning immigration policy into a mirror of the creator economy itself.

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🔒 VC & startup newsletters worth your attention

If you want to stay sharp on deals, funds, and trends, you don’t need Twitter doom-scrolling just 5–10 minutes a day and a few trusted inbox reads. Here’s a clean starter pac:

🖱 StrictlyVC: Operational updates on deals, fund moves, and investor interviews. For quickly orienting yourself in the week’s most important events.

🖱 Term Sheet (Fortune): One of the most-read VC newsletters globally. For tracking major rounds, new funds, and shifts in LP strategy.

🖱 Not Boring (Packy McCormick): Deep dives on companies and long-term trends through a venture lens. For non-obvious insights and big-picture thinking.

🖱 a16z Tech Newsletter: Research and analysis from Andreessen Horowitz across AI, biotech, fintech, and more. For strategic frameworks rather than daily noise.

🖱 The Diff (By Byrne Hobart): Thoughtful essays on markets, companies, and capital structures. For understanding venture through macro and corporate finance.

🖱 PitchBook — The Daily Pitch: A daily briefing on private markets and venture activity. For staying up to date on deals and trends with minimal effort.

🖱 Axios Pro Rata: Short, sharp updates on deals and dealmakers across VC, PE, and M&A. Perfect if you like the “one-minute, straight-to-the-point” format.

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🚁 Walmart’s drone rollout signals a shift from pilots to scale

A partnership once framed as experimentation is hardening into infrastructure, as Alphabet’s Wing deepens its integration with Walmart’s delivery engine.

🖱 TechCrunch reports that Wing will activate drone operations at 150 additional Walmart locations, its most aggressive expansion so far.

🖱 The move pushes the total footprint to 270+ stores, giving aerial delivery access to roughly one in ten Americans.

🖱 Wing is Alphabet’s autonomous delivery arm, but Walmart is now its clearest path to commercial relevance.

🖱 The drones are optimized for lightweight, high-urgency orders groceries, household staples, and forgotten essentials dropped by tether in minutes.

🖱 Walmart says repeat usage is already common in live markets, indicating behavioral adoption rather than curiosity-driven trials.

🖱 The expansion prioritizes dense suburban corridors where speed, not bulk, defines customer value.

🖱 From Walmart’s side, drones ease labor pressure and compress last-mile costs while narrowing Amazon’s speed advantage.

🖱 For Alphabet, Wing stands out as a rare moonshot converting autonomy into operating revenue. Regulatory friction remains, but the scale implies increasing FAA comfort with routine drone flights.

Drones are shifting from marketing story to operational tool inside Walmart.

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