Robots, Runaway Valuations, and the $80 Video Game: This Week in Tech

Lauren: BGHOST2mhm Derek: Okay, welcome back to Tech Insider Weekly. I'm about ready to burst with this one. Speaker 3: That's a strong open. What's got you like this? Derek: Chamath is CEO again of a coding startup, 135 million dollar Series A. Speaker 3: Wait, wait, wait. Chamath is actually running the thing now? Derek: Plot twist, right? We'll get into it. Speaker 3: We're also looking at this Crunchbase data on Q2 exits, biggest quarter for... For billion-dollar startup deal since 2021. Derek: Which raises the real question, with six mega VC firms basically running the table now, what does that mean for founders who aren't in the room? Speaker 3: That's a thread we're pulling all episode, honestly. Derek: Switching gears here, Derek, tell them about the robots. Speaker 3: Oh, you're going to love this part. A $5 billion startup putting humanoid robots to actual work, Derek: Wow. Speaker 3: not a demo, real shifts. Derek: Shut up! Speaker 3: Dead serious—plus this wild claim out of a former Databricks AI exec cutting AI's power bill by a thousand times. Derek: A thousand? Okay, we need receipts on that one. Speaker 3: We're chasing 'em down. Derek: And later, GTA Six's price tag, Xbox discounts before a hike, and why Google employees are walking away from what used to be the dream job. Speaker 3: A lot of ground today. Derek: So much ground. Derek, where do we even start? Speaker 3: Eh, ground. Fair enough. Let's get into the Chamath news first. Derek: OK, so get this, $135 million for a Series A. One round. Speaker 3: Whistle. That's not a seed round. That's a small country's GDP. Derek: Right? So Chamath Palihapitiya's startup 80-90 Labs just closed a $135 million Series A led by Salesforce Ventures with Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo and David Sacks' Craft Ventures in the mix too. Speaker 3: And the part that actually stopped me? He's stepping in as CEO. He didn't just fund it, he's running it. Derek: That's a nice story. Founder investor takes the wheel. But show me why that actually matters. Speaker 3: Founder psychology, honestly. When the guy with the checkbook also owns the P&L, the incentives line up in a way that a hired CEO's never quite match. Derek: Or it's just a really expensive vanity project with better PR. Speaker 3: Could be both. Derek: Let's get real for a second, though, because the money isn't just going to famous podcast guys. Crunchbase's data shows Q2 of this year had the most billion dollar startup exits since the 2021 peak. Speaker 3: Wait, since 2021? That was the top of the mountain. Derek: I know. And you've got the biggest venture-backed exit of all time sitting right in there. SpaceX. Speaker 3: No way. All time? Like ever? Derek: All time ever. So the exit markets thawing. Thawing money's moving again and somehow it's landing in fewer and fewer hands. Speaker 3: Which is the Giga-VC thing you keep bringing up. Derek: Exactly. Inc. had a piece on this. Just six firms now dominate the majority of startup financing. Speaker 3: Six. Not 60, not 600. Six. Derek: And that changes how founders even pitch. You're not shopping a term sheet to 20 firms anymore. You're praying one of six giants likes your deck. deck Speaker 3: That's a real power shift in negotiating leverage. If there's only six buyers, the buyers set the price. Derek: Okay, but what actually happened with valuations though? Because this is where I get twitchy. Forbes profiled this guy David Silver, former DeepMind scientist, pitched investors on a company with literally no product. Speaker 3: No revenue, no product, just a 30-minute Zoom pitch? Derek: Just a pitch. And Forbes reports founders like him are structuring rounds so VCs can The seeds can invest at wildly different price points in the same deal, basically manufacturing a sky high headline valuation without ever proving the thing works. Speaker 3: So it's less, here's our traction, and more, here's our story, and by the way the tranche pricing makes the number look huge. Derek: That's my read. It's a nice story, but show me the actual product. Speaker 3: Some things never change, huh? Hype dressed up in new financial plumbing. Derek: The plumbing just got a lot fancier, though. Six firms, 100-plus million checks, no revenue unicorns. Speaker 3: And a podcast guy running his own AI company now. Derek: When you put it like that, it sounds like a fever dream. Speaker 3: It kind of is one, but it raises the obvious next question. Derek: With all that cash flooding in, who's actually building the thing? Speaker 3: Because at a lot of these companies, it isn't the engineers typing the code anymore. Derek: Speaking of who's actually building these things, I gotta say, the coding story is wilder than the funding story. Speaker 3: Wilder than a $135 million round closing in what, a week? Derek: Almost. So Ben Bergman at Business Insider talked to Rami Alhamad, the CEO over at Alma. That's a nutrition coaching app backed by Menlo Ventures. Speaker 3: Okay. Derek: Rami's quote was basically, nearly everything we ship now is AI-generated. Not a lot-nearly everything. Speaker 3: Wait, Wait—nearly all the code written by a model? Derek: That's what he told Bergman, and Business Insider surveyed dozens of founders finding the same pattern across the board. Speaker 3: Okay, but what actually happens when something breaks? Because someone still has to read that code. Derek: That's the new problem. Bergman's piece calls it "slop"--code that ships fast but nobody fully understands. Speaker 3: So you've got speed with no memory of why anything was built the way it was. Derek: Exactly. And that's this whole segment's premise. Speed's a double edged sword when the sword doesn't leave a paper trail. Speaker 3: Which, funny enough, is probably why Investors threw $135 million at fixing it. Derek: Right. Different company, though. This is 8090. Chamath's shop from last segment. Speaker 3: Oh, the same 8090? Derek: Same one. SiliconANGLE reported Salesforce Ventures led that Series A. It's a with Nikesh Arora and Adam D'Angelo all in. Speaker 3: So Chamath raises the money, becomes CEO, and the pitches will clean up the mess AI just made? Derek: Basically, their flagship product is meant to be the AI development layer for engineering teams going forward. Speaker 3: Let's get real for a second-is that a real product or a bet on a future that doesn't exist yet? Derek: Fair question, but given how much slop Business Insider is describing, someone's going to need the janitor tool. Speaker 3: The janitor tool-I like that. Switching gears, though, are you ready for the actual jaw dropper of this segment? Derek: Oh, hit me. Speaker 3: Naveen Rao-former head of AI at Databricks. Lauren: His new company is called Unconventional AI. Derek: Okay. Lauren: TechCrunch's Russell Brandom reported this week that Rao thinks he can cut AI's power bill by a thousand times. Derek: I'm sorry, 1,000X, not 10%, not double efficiency, 1,000 Wow. times less power? Lauren: That's the claim. Different chip architecture. Oscillator based instead of the transistor stuff everyone's using now. Derek: Okay, but what actually happened Thursday? Did they ship any? If anything, or just a slide deck. Lauren: They released a real model, an image generator called Un-0, according to Brandom's report, as a proof of concept. Derek: So it's not theoretical anymore. Lauren: Not entirely, it's early, but it's a working system, which is more than most power claims come with. Derek: Because right now, data centers are the actual bottleneck on all this AI money we keep talking about. Lauren: Right, and that's the tension. Everyone's racing to build models while the power grid just... The groans! Derek: So, somewhere in Menlo Park there's a guy hoping his oscillator saved the industry's electric bill. Lauren: Pretty much. And zoom out for a second. John Sviokla at Forbes has a piece tying this to something bigger. Derek: Go on. Lauren: Harvard Business School and INSEAD studied over 2,900 Y Combinator startups and found AI-native firms just run leaner, fewer people, period. Derek: Not doing old workflows faster, actually built different from. Right from day one. Lauren: That's the finding, which raises the question hanging over this whole segment: Derek: If the AI is writing the code and maybe cutting the power bill a thousandfold, it's gotta go somewhere real, right? Lauren: Oh, it's going somewhere very real: into actual machines, robots, cars that drive themselves. Derek: Now that I want to see. Shifting gears from code to actual metal—are you ready for the robot part? Lauren: Wait, wait, are we talking Terminator or are we talking Roomba? Derek: Somewhere in between Bloomberg had this piece Thursday on a five billion dollar startup putting humanoid robots to actual work—not a stage demo—real shifts. Lauren: Five billion for robots that what, walk around and lift boxes? Derek: Bloomberg's framing was that this is the first real real test of whether humanoid robots can do paid work at scale, not just wow a crowd at a conference. Lauren: Okay, but putting them to work doing what exactly? Folding laundry? Derek: More like warehouse and factory floor tasks. The bet is labor, not spectacle. Lauren: Sure, ask me again in a year if it's still working or just standing there. Derek: Fair. But speaking of robots that actually generate revenue, Business Insider had Rya Jethas piece on FieldAI hitting a $100 million milestone. Lauren: A hundred million in funding? Derek: Revenue and contracts combined, their software helps robots navigate mines, construct construction sites places Wow. humans really don't want to be crawling around in exactly Lauren: Okay, that I actually like. Send the robot into the collapsed mine shaft, not my cousin Gary. Derek: the pitch oh Lauren: Alright, Derek: Lauren: switching gears here, because I have been waiting to talk about this one. Robotaxis in San Francisco. Derek: no what happened so TechCrunch Kirsten Korosec pointed out these empty self-driving cars are constantly cruising around Not to pick anyone up, just heading to some depot to get cleaned and charged. Lauren: Wait, so they're just driving themselves to spa day? Derek: Basically, it's literally called deadhead miles in the industry, miles driven with zero paying passenger. Lauren: That seems like it would kill the whole profit math. Derek: It does. Korosec called it one of the biggest barriers to robo-taxi profitability, and this is where Aseon Labs comes in, Redwood City's startup out of Y Combinator's spring cohort. Lauren: And their fixes? Derek: A parking-space-sized pods scattered around the city that clean and charge Charge the cars on the spot. No detour to some depot forty minutes away. Lauren: Huh. So instead of the car going to the spa, the spa comes to the car. Derek: That's the whole business model, yeah. TechCrunch says they've raised $10 million from Crane Venture Partners for it. Lauren: Small check next to that $5 billion robot company, but a real problem to solve. Derek: Now flip that on its head, because not every startup is chasing more sensors, more software. Speaker 3: Software. Lauren: Oh, you mean Slate. Derek: I mean Slate. KTLA road in one of these electric pick ups starts at twenty four nine fifty. Lauren: Twenty four nine fifty is cheap for an EV. Derek: And here's the twist: no built-in radio, hand-crank windows. Lauren: Wait, actual hand cranks in twenty twenty six? Derek: On purpose. KTLA said it's about simplicity and customization over stacking on more screens. Lauren: While everyone else is racing to put a touch screen on the touch screen. Derek: Meanwhile, Slate's basically saying, what if the car was just... A car. Lauren: I respect the contrarian move-not every problem needs an AI bolted onto it. Derek: Robots doing real shifts, taxis skipping the spa commute, and a truck betting on less tech not more. Quite a spread. Lauren: All that venture money finally showing up as something you can touch. Derek: Speaking of things you touch, your wallet's up next, because the gadgets and games waiting for you are not getting any cheaper. Okay, shifting gears from robots to something that hits closer to home: your actual wallet. Lauren: Oh no, what now? Derek: GTA VI Ars Technica reported it's going to cost more than other AAA games. We're talking above that usual seventy dollar mark. Lauren: Wait, really? For one game? Derek: Yeah, and Ars Technica framed it as this test case, like publishers want to know what the ceiling actually is. Scope and scale cost money now. Lauren: I mean to be fair-if any game can charge a premium, it's that one. Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Lauren: But it does set a precedent. Derek: Right; everyone else is watching to copy the number. Lauren: Speaking of pay more right before you regret it, IGN had this Xbox story. Derek: Smooth transition. Lauren: Microsoft's jacking up Xbox Series X prices by up to one hundred and fifty dollars starting August first, and Walmart and Target are discounting the console to $ Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty dollars. Lauren: Five hundred and seventy three dollars and ninety nine cents right now before the hike hits. Derek: So it's not even really a discount. It's a last chance before we squeeze you sale. Lauren: Pretty much. Derek: Classic. Lauren: Meanwhile, over at Instagram, Adam Mosseri's testing new ways to let you customize your algorithm. More control over what you see, less control over what they show you. Derek: Sure, give users a dial, but who's really steering? AIRING. Lauren: That's That's the question nobody's answering. Derek: And here's one that surprised me: Business Insider talked to workers who left Google, the dream job. Lauren: Wait, people are leaving Google? On purpose? Derek: Jacob Zinkulas's piece profiled a few: Bushra Amiwala, Yousuf Imran, and Taylor LaSane all walked away for startups. Wow. Lauren: That's wild, honestly. Considering everything we've talked about today-the money, the robots, people are still choosing the chaos over the comfort. Derek: Yeah, and I don't think that's a coincidence, Derek. Big companies are stable, sure, but start ups are where the interesting risk is right now. Lauren: Which is basically our whole episode in one sentence. Derek: Funding, robots, and now the humans deciding where to point themselves. Lauren: So watch the console shelf, watch the games price tag, and watch who's quitting Google next quarter, because apparently all three are telling the same story about where the money's at. Derek: And he's actually going. OK, so that's the episode, and honestly, that Chamath moment still gets me. Stepping into the CEO chair himself? Lauren: Betting on his own company-that's the confidence. Derek: The big takeaway, though? Funding's getting weirder and more concentrated at the same time. Founders have to work harder to stand out. Lauren: Right, and whether it's six mega VC firms calling the shots or robots doing actual work in Texas, the theme's the same. The nice story isn't enough anymore. Derek: Show me the actual product. Lauren: Exactly. Derek: If you like this one, subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a review-it helps. Lauren: Got a founder we should talk to, or a story we're missing? Send it our way. Tag us online. Derek: New episodes every Wednesday. Lauren: Thanks for hanging out with us. Derek: See you next week. Speaker 3: Oh