This Week in AI

Follow Alex:

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 kick off Token Price Wars | E22 Jul 16, 2026

Show notes

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

PAYPAL OPEN

Today’s show:

The price of tokens keeps tumbling down, and it’s changing who controls AI.

Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 landed within two weeks of one another, offering powerful alternatives at a fraction of frontier prices. But are SpaceXAI’s latest offering and open weight models truly ready to replace Opus, GPT-5.5, and Fable? Are enterprises finally ready to stop renting and start owning their intelligence?

On TWiAI Episode 22, Jason and Lon welcome three top founders — Sara Hooker (Adaption Labs), Manu Sharma (Labelbox), and Spiros Xanthos (Resolve AI) — to break down the global AI price war, and what it means for the frontier labs and customers alike. Plus Denis Hassabis’ call for an AI Standards Body, Uber and Waymo duke it out over DC robotaxis, and is SpaceXAI really going to put data centers in orbit any time soon?

Guests:

Sara Hooker on X: https://x.com/sarahookr

Adaption Labs: https://adaptionlabs.ai/

Manu Sharma on X: https://x.com/manuaero

Labelbox: https://labelbox.com/

Spiros Xanthos on X: https://x.com/spirosx

Resolve AI: https://resolve.ai/

Relevant Links

Introducing Grok 4.5**:** https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5

GLM from Z.ai: https://z.ai

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: https://artificialanalysis.ai/

Demis Hassabis: “A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age”: https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2076957440109625718

Cerebras: https://www.cerebras.ai/

Austin Allred post cited by Jason: https://x.com/Austen/status/2076745226387902925

TechCrunch coverage of DC autonomous driving bill: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/13/ubers-robotaxi-lobbying-effort-has-put-it-on-a-collision-course-with-waymo/

DoorDash: Meet Dot: https://about.doordash.com/en-us/dot

TechCrunch coverage of orbital data center debate: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/13/sam-altmans-space-data-center-trash-talk-is-what-most-experts-already-believe

Falcon 9 booster’s record 36th flight: https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/07/09/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-falcon-9-rocket-on-record-breaking-36th-flight/

Timestamps:0:00 A new generation of lower-cost models

4:10 Enterprises want their own intelligence stack

6:10 Frontier vs. open source: where does the value go?

10:03 Is enterprises destined to go small?

30:04 Self-improvement as the real fix

31:52 Should the AI industry regulate itself?

47:14 Uber vs. Waymo in DC

1:03:53 Can AI data centers in space really work?

1:14:47 You get a plug! Everyone gets a plug!

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

Follow Alex:

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Z.ai: https://z.ai/

What happens if China pulls the plug on open-source AI? | Ep 21 Jul 09, 2026

Show notes

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

PAYPAL

Today’s show:

China is weighing a ban on foreign access to its top AI models… the same low-cost open-weight systems on which half of the Valley’s startups are building. So we asked our two all-star panelists — Arena CEO/Co-Founder Anastasios Angelopoulos and Hippocratic AI CEO/Co-Founder Munjal Shah — what happens to US companies when their favorite cheap, powerful models vaporize overnight.

PLUS why Hippocratic runs 31 models in parallel to ensure clinical-grade safety, the latency-vs-intelligence tradeoff no one is optimizing for, and why a company’s benchmarks might become their most valuable IP.

Guests:

Anastasios Angelopoulos on X: https://x.com/ml_angelopoulos

Arena AI: https://arena.ai/

Agent Arena: https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent

Munjal Shah on X: https://x.com/munjalshah

Hippocratic AI: https://hippocraticai.com/

Relevant Links:

Reuters: “Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access…”: https://www.reuters.com/world/beijing-is-looking-curbing-overseas-access-chinas-top-ai-models-sources-say-2026-07-07/

Alibaba’s Qwen: https://qwen.ai/

Google’s Gemma: https://ai.google.dev/gemma

Reflection AI: https://reflection.ai/

Nvidia: “How Open Models are Driving Research”: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-models-icml-2026/

DoorDash: “How we learned to trust our AI code reviewer”: https://careersatdoordash.com/blog/how-we-learned-to-trust-our-ai-code-reviewer-at-doordash

Harvey AI: https://www.harvey.ai/

ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/

Anthropic: “A global workspace in language models”: https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace

CNN: “Trump rings opening bell to mark first day of trading for Trump Accounts”: https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/business/trump-accounts-launch

Brown University Health: https://www.brownhealth.org/

Timestamps:

0:00 Will US companies lose access to Chinese models?

1:42 Open source makes running 31 models viable

5:01 How deep is the West's open source bench?

13:20 Jagged Intelligence and why post-training matters

25:22 Benchmarks as living quality checks

32:49 Why models still struggle with drug names

42:58 Fine-tuning TV, cough, and sob detection

46:08 What is Arena actually selling?

1:08:29 Nationalization vs. buying stakes in AI companies

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

Follow Alex:

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Mythos, Sonnet 5, GLM-5.2 Dominate the News Cycle | Episode 20 Jul 02, 2026

Show notes

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

PAYPAL

Today’s show:

The US government won’t let you use the most powerful releases from US AI labs… but a Chinese lab is giving away their latest frontier model for free.

This week, we’ve got three AI CEOs building in image generation (Victor Perez of Krea), mobile agents (Div Garg of The AGI Company), and enterprise governance (Andrew Berman of Runlayer). Together, they’re breaking down what’s really happening underneath all this chaos, and why the industry’s more focused on “minimum viable intelligence” over breaking benchmarks.

Guests

Victor Perez on X: https://x.com/viccpoes

Krea AI: https://www.krea.ai/

Krea 2 Raw and Turbo on Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/krea/Krea-2-Raw

Div Garg on X: https://x.com/divgarg

The AGI Company: https://theagi.company/

Andrew Berman on X: https://x.com/berman66

Runlayer: https://www.runlayer.com/

Relevant Links

Anthropic: “Introducing Claude Sonnet 5”: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5

Z.ai: GLM-5.2: https://docs.z.ai/guides/llm/glm-5.2

Yuchen Jin X post: “GLM-5.2 is the open source Claude moment”: https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/2071278256817574297

TechCrunch: GPT-5.6 restricted rollout coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/openai-limits-gpt-5-6-rollout-after-government-request-says-restrictions-shouldnt-be-the-norm/

AndroidWorld benchmark on GitHub: https://github.com/google-research/android_world

The Information Higgsfield valuation article: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-video-startup-talks-quadruple-valuation-5-billion

Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF): https://aaif.io/

Tomasz Tunguz: “When AI Costs More Than The Engineer”: https://tomtunguz.com/ai-spend-breakeven-2029/

Fortune Runlayer raise coverage: https://fortune.com/2026/06/24/exclusive-vinod-khosla-felicis-runlayer-nanit-30-million-enterprise-ai/

Gusto: https://gusto.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 Making sense of US AI policy

5:09 Tiny Action Models vs. LLMs

7:02 Runlayer, AGI Inc, and computer-use agents

10:05 What does "trusted access" really mean?

12:37 Why Krea open sourced its image model

22:21 BREAKING: Claude Sonnet 5 is here

26:00 GLM-5.2 is the open source Claude moment

31:58 Personalization and corporate ontology

41:25 Can we trust Higgsfield's numbers?

50:39 Distillation: The threat is real

58:01 Agentic personhood and corporate rights

1:03:19 Everyone's AGI timeline and p(doom) score

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

X: https://x.com/lons

Follow Alex:

X: https://x.com/alex

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Thank you to our partners:

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

Are world models the unlock for Physical AI? | Episode 19 Jun 25, 2026

Show notes

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Paypal

Today’s show:

*When we think of “Physical AI,” most of us conjure images of humanoid robots and self-driving cars. But there’s a lot more to the category than just breakdancing Chinese bots and Waymos, from excavators autonomously digging tomorrows worksites, to a robot the size of four pizza boxes deploying to the ISS.

Guest host Alex Wilhelm sits down with three founders in the trenches of the Physical AI Space:

Boris Sofman of Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction equipment

Jeff Hawke of Odyssey, a frontier AI lab specializing in world models for robotics and video games

Ethan Barajas of Icarus Robotics, designers of the free-flying Joy robot that will join the ISS crew in 2027

Guests:

Boris Sofman on X: https://x.com/bsofman

Bedrock Robotics: https://bedrockrobotics.com/

Jeff Hawke on X: https://x.com/jeffrey_hawke

Odyssey: https://odyssey.ml/

Ethan Barajas on X: https://x.com/ethanbarajas11

Icarus Robotics: https://www.icarusrobotics.com/

Relevant Links

Bedrock Excavators Remove 65,000 Cubic Yards of Dirt: https://www.enr.com/articles/61982-bedrock-robotics-excavators-remove-65-000-cubic-yards-of-dirt-on-southwest-project

Odyssey $310M Series B article: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/world-model-maker-odyssey-nabs-1-45b-valuation-backed-by-amazon-and-other-big-names/

Icarus “Joyride” Mission announcement: https://thedebrief.org/icarus-is-building-the-robotic-labor-force-for-space-voyager-technologies-is-sending-a-next-generation-zero-gravity-robot-on-a-joyride-to-space/

PROWL: Prioritized Regret-Driven Optimization for World Model Learning: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18803

NVIDIA Cosmos 3 report: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/cosmos-lab/cosmos3/technical-report.pdf

ISS Columbus Laboratory Module: https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/columbus-laboratory-module/

NASA’s Astrobee flying robot: https://www.nasa.gov/astrobee/

Voyager Technologies: https://www.voyagerspace.com/

Vast Space: https://www.vastspace.com/

Blue Origin’s New Glenn: https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn

“Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735

“Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke: https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0553287893

Theo Von “This Past Weekend” podcast: https://www.theovon.com/podcast

Anthropic statement on Fable/Mythos suspension: https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access

Timestamps:

0:00 The Year of Physical AI

1:28 Why everyone's bullish on world models

7:03 Physical AI is harder, but probably bigger

9:08 How to think about world models

16:00 When data becomes "adversarial"

25:00 How Bedrock powers autonomous excavators

30:48 Why teleoperation gets a bad rap

39:10 Meet Joy the space robot

41:33 Laser comms coming to next-gen stations

46:29 Why everyone hates data centers

57:33 When does Claude Fable come back?

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

Follow Alex:

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups