Elon hires new Twitter CEO, Anthropic upgrades AI chatbot, Google expands Bard
Elon Musk has hired Linda Yaccarino, former head of global ads at NBCUniversal, as Twitter's new CEO; Yaccarino will focus on business ops, while Musk handles CTO duties and oversees product - Link
Google announced the expansion of its AI chatbot Bard to 180 countries, not including the EU and Canada, likely due to GDPR and other local regulations - Link
Anthropic enhanced its AI chatbot Claude by expanding its context window input from 9K to 100K tokens, surpassing GPT-4's 32K token threshold - Link
Meta announced an AI Sandbox for advertisers, which will help with ad copy generation, background image creation, and auto aspect ratio-resizing for Facebook and Instagram campaigns - Link
House of Macadamias is the next big health trend! Get 20% off your first purchase and a free bottle of cold-pressed macadamia oil at houseofmacadamias.com/twist by using code twist20!
Dee Murthy joins Jason to discuss the origin of the Group Chat podcast, break down his new startup, Ghost (1:44), and dive into fostering communities, staying true to your brand, and more! (30:12) - Link
The Block sources: Do Kwon is set to be released on $436K bail after being detained in Montenegro; the Terraform Labs co-founder also faces legal issues in South Korea and the US related to the collapse of TerraUSD - Link
Vela Partners, an AI-powered VC firm founded by former Google senior program manager Yiğit Ihlamur, emerged from stealth with $25M AUM and 32 portfolio companies; the firm uses predictive algorithms to source investments - Link
TechCrunch sources: Byju's, India's most valuable startup, raised $250M from Davidson Kempner, with a further $700M expected from a sovereign fund at a $22B valuation, as it prepares for the IPO of its subsidiary Aakash - Link
Wingcopter, a Germany-based drone startup focused on delivering medical supplies, raised ~$44M in funding from the EIB; Wingcopter, like other drone startups, has focused early operations in emerging parts of Africa due to fewer commercial regulations - Link
This Week in Startups
E1740: Building brands and community + influencer marketing that actually works with Dee Murthy
E1739: Reid Hoffman on AI's "crescendo moment," regulation and real-world applications
E1738: Box CEO Aaron Levie breaks down Box AI and generative AI’s impact on business
E1737: GPT-4 web browsing, plugin demos, AI layoffs + more with Sunny Madra & Vinny Lingham
E1736: Mining asteroids with AstroForge CEO Matthew Gialich
Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance
QuickNode - Get one month free by using code TWIST
OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first six months