Gm. I was reading an article the other day that said Sam Altman used to predict the odds of a founder being successful by how fast they responded to messages and emails. I am now responding to messages and emails at light speed. Thanks a lot, Sam.

— Stephen Flanders

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🏠 TECH

THE Tech Trial Of The Century

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the DOJ’s lawsuit attacking Google’s search dominance, calling it the “tech trial of the century”.

Well, it looks like we spoke too soon. Because the FTC and 17 states just dropped a bomb on Amazon.

That bomb comes in the form of a lawsuit against Amazon’s e-commerce money printing machine.

The 172-page complaint alleges that Amazon maintains a monopoly by:

• Requiring sellers on its platform to purchase Amazon’s in-house logistics services in order to secure the best seller benefits, also known as “Prime” eligibility.

• Forcing sellers to list their products on Amazon at the lowest prices anywhere on the web.

And that alleged monopoly is hurting sellers, by forcing them to accept Amazon’s terms, and consumers, as there are no competitors forcing Amazon’s prices down.

In FTC’s chair Lina Khan’s own words, Amazon is “squarely focused on preventing anyone else from gaining that same critical mass of customers”.

So, we have this lawsuit with everything on the table, even a potential breakup.

Amazon naturally disagrees with the FTC, even saying that this suit could hurt consumers by forcing them to raise prices, offer slower and less reliable Prime shipping, and make Prime more expensive.

Ultimately, we have a true heavyweight fight on our hands here, and the stakes couldn’t be bigger.

The Big Picture: Even considering the FTC’s recent crusade against big tech with suits against Amazon Prime and Google, this has the makings of an exceptionally consequential case.

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🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• Your Reddit karma can now turn into money.

• Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions.

• Techies in SF are really into pods.

• Apple defended its default Google search status in court with “there wasn’t a valid alternative”.

AI

• Spotify is using AI to clone podcasters’ voices and translate them to other languages.

• ChatGPT now responds to voices and picture commands.

• Anthropic landed an outrageous amount of money from Amazon.

• And OpenAI is raising funding at an outrageous valuation.

SCIENCE

• Light therapy helps the brain clear out toxic Alzheimer’s proteins.

• We may soon be able to regrow teeth.

• Researchers “bioprinted” living brain cell networks in the lab.

• Robots with compound eye vision? Robots with compound eye vision.

CRYPTO

• Coinbase and Kraken are both eyeing the Spanish market.

• The SEC has pushed off the Ark and Global X spot bitcoin ETF applications.

• Saylor and MicroStrategy continue to stack stupid amounts of sats.

• Binance US revenue is…not doing too hot.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: Traceless Materials has raised $38.7 million to scale its plastic alternatives.

Stat: 116 Degrees: How hot the iPhone 15 can get. Doesn’t seem ideal.

Rabbit hole: The Race To Create Factories In Space (The Guardian)

😂 WACKY AI WEDNESDAY

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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💉 DOPAMINE HIT

I can’t lie, this is pretty cool.

@tiktokstalman

This #iPhone15 5x lens is going to be awesome, full video on YouTube #iphone15pro #filmmaking #fyp

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