Gm. Happy September everyone. I love this month. Labor Day Weekend. Hot but not too hot. Football is back. The NBA is drawing closer. What is there not to like?

— Stephen Flanders

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

.Three years ago, IBM promised to no longer offer, develop, or research facial recognition technology.

The reasoning behind the decision was simple: they did not want to contribute to a technology that could be used for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or human rights violations.

But now that promise appears to have gone out the window.

Last month, IBM signed a $69.8 million contract with the British government to develop a biometrics program for their immigration and law enforcement officials.

And facial recognition is part of this program. Specifically, a tool that will enable the authorities to match photos of people with images stored on a database, which is known as a “one-to-many” matching system.

AKA, the exact system IBM previously said would “most likely be used for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or other violations of human rights”.

IBM wasn’t the only company that declared they were done with facial recognition technologies. Amazon and Microsoft made the same pledge, and so far they’ve stuck to it.

But tech isn’t unified in their opposition to facial recognition technology. X just revealed that they are now collecting biometric data and Sam Altman’s Worldcoin is infamous for their storage of the same data.

It is clear there’s a fight for the future of our biometric privacy.

It’ll be very interesting to see which side comes out on top.

The Big Picture: We love technology here, but we have to continue to fight for our personal privacy as technology advances.

Instacart just filed for IPO at a $24 billion valuation. That’s $0 to $24 billion of wealth creation that exclusively happened in the private markets.

The top blue-chip startups like Stripe, SpaceX, OpenAI, OpenAI, and Databricks have created hundreds of billions in value in the private markets that are nearly impossible to access for non-institutional investors.

Sandhill Markets opens these doors - bringing institutional pre-IPO deals to individual investors.

This is a “Robinhood for Private Markets” with the Top 25 pre-IPO blue chips – Stripe, OpenAI, SpaceX, Instacart, Epic, Databricks, Rippling, Anduril and Neuralink. Backed by top investors like a16z, Floodgate, Matrix.

Low $5K minimums, with 0% mgmt. fees, 0% transaction fees, and 0% carry.

Review live deals, pricing, and data on the Top 25 pre-IPO startups for free today.

What else is going on?

Stat: $1 Billion: How much revenue OpenAI is on pace to reach over the next year.

Rabbit hole: VPN Relationship Map (Windscribe)

If you want a boring list of startup raises, look away now. If you want the 3 coolest raises of the week, then you’ve come to the right place.

This Final Jeopardy! question stumped every contestant. Can you get it right?

Category: Hymns

Clue: A Christian hymn and a Jewish holiday hymn are both titled this, also the name of a 2009 Tony-nominated musical.

The best resources we recently came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🏆 Kula is your AI assistant to hire top talent.

🥷 Team GPT enables you to collaborate in ChatGPT.

🍰 Don’t let collaboration tools overwhelm your team.

Is this rizz?

If you’re interested in advertising with us, send an email over to [email protected] with the subject “Homescreen Ads”.

Rock of Ages