Gm. Another day, another missing $50 million. Well, that’s only if your name is Sam Bankman-Fried. See below for more.

POLLS

Wednesday’s poll had some sweet answers.

“Nintendo 64” All I can think is Marioooooooo! Did you hear the new Super Mario movie hit $400M at the box office? Good breakdown here.

“Dang, that feeling when you’re 2 years out from “all the old folks”” You know what they say, can’t teach an old dog new ChatGPT tricks.

“Best present was a guitar. I had to learn it now that I owned one. I received the gift of music ultimately, and the gift of expression deeper than my words could ever deliver.” ❤️ Aw my favorite was a laptop at age 10. I learned how to use MovieMaker and still edit videos almost everyday!

Today’s poll:

🏠 TECH

All Eyes On Elon

Tech’s it girl was back at it again this week, and per usual, each of his moves made headlines.

Of course, we’re talking about none other than the Chief Twit, meme lord, and Dogefather himself, Elon Musk.

Let’s break down what shenanigans Elon got into this week.

A Twitter Generative AI Project

Elon is one of tech’s loudest anti-AI voices, notably sponsoring the infamous pause AI open letter.

Well, it appears that’s not enough to stop him from creating his own AI chatbot. According to Business Insider, Elon has purchased 10,000 GPUs and poached AI talent from DeepMind.

Considering the man’s love of cost-cutting, one can only assume that he is splurging in an attempt to build a TwitterGPT.

If the Altman-Elon drama was bad before, imagine what it will be like after Twitter enters the AI game. There’s a plot for a reality show here somewhere.

Twitter → X

R.I.P Twitter, 2006-2023.

No, Twitter the social media platform is not dead (yet). But, Twitter the independent business is. That’s because Twitter has officially merged with X Corp, Elon’s giant holding company.

At first glance, this looks to be a boring merger story. But, there’s more than meets the eye here. Elon has long harbored dreams of launching an “everything app” a la WeChat. The name of that super-app?

X. 👀

An Explosive Interview

Elon must have woke up feeling particularly dangerous on Tuesday, because the interview he gave that night was nothing short of peak entertainment.

Among the highlights were:

• Elon saying he was sleeping on a library couch, and that his dog Floki was acting Twitter CEO.

• Twitter is now break-even.

• Advertisers were returning.

• And, above all else, an absolute roasting of the interviewer who tried to attack Elon for allowing hate speech on Twitter but then couldn’t come up with one measly example.

This is why techies like Elon need to ditch the mainstream media and read news by people who love tech.

Cough, cough.

Why should I care? Besides being insanely entertaining, Elon is also one of the most important people in tech due to his ownership of Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink. His moves are worth following, and in this case, we got a sneak peek into Twitter’s possible chatbot and super-app future.

🏠 CRYPTO

It’s Aliiiive!!! It’s alive!!! FTX?!?!

The zombie crypto company FTX may be coming back to life.

The defunct exchange has recovered $7.3 billion of customer funds and could restarted as soon as next year, according to their lawyers.

“The situation has stabilised, and the dumpster fire is out,” FTX attorney Andy Dietderich said during a hearing at a Delaware bankruptcy court.

Sam Bankman-Fried, ever the jokester, said, “We sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life” in an internal report. Well, glad to see he still has sense of humor as he faces 13 criminal charges.

The FTX Group had 56 entities that "did not produce financial statements of any kind," while other parts of the corporation "relied on a hodgepodge of Google documents, Slack communications, shared drives, and Excel spreadsheets and other non-enterprise solutions to manage their assets and liabilities," the interim report said. Sounds messier than my Dropbox lol.

Before FTX can get restarted, a few questions need to be answered. Reuters wrote:

Why should I care? If FTX comes back, there could be a resurgence in crypto. Of course, this is all speculative, but $7.3 billion returned to the degens could buy quite a lot of monkey JPEGs.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

• NPR has said sayonara to Twitter.

• Google launched the first public beta of Android 14.

• LinkedIn can finally verify your job.

• Meta’s employees aren’t feeling the love these days.

Stat: Amazon is now charging a $1 fee when you return through a UPS store. The era of free returns was fun while it lasted…

Rabbit hole: 17 Questions That Changed My Life (Tim Ferriss)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

I’m trying something new here to bring you only the coolest startup rounds you can sound smart talking about tonight with your friends at the BBQ.

2 COOLEST STARTUP RAISES OF THE WEEK

1. At-home smart gym Tonal raised $130 million at a valuation of $550-$600 million, down from its previous $1.6 billion valuation in 2021. Turns out when the world opened up, people still liked going to the gym (even if some weirdos are making TikToks in them). I love using my parents' Tonal when I’m home, but nothing beats the gym.

2. Whizz, a service that lets delivery people rent e-bikes, raised $3.4 million. E-bikes are super expensive so Whizz offers e-bike rental on a monthly subscription. According to Forbes, it currently has 2,000 delivery workers using its bikes who carry out deliveries for platforms like Uber Eats, Doordash and Grubhub. This is sick! Next time you see a delivery biker whizz by, I’ll be checking to see if they’re using Whizz.

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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

➕ Use Keeper to ask an AI account anything. Correct 83% of the time. Tbh, sounds more correct than my accountant I fired lol.

🤖 Loopin is an AI note-taker for Google Meet. Plus you can collab on meetings and next steps.

🐦 Sign up for TweetHunter to find banger tweets, schedule your own tweets, and work with ghostwriters.

💉 DOPAMINE HIT

IF APPLE MADE WINDOW BLINDS 😂

REACH 20K+ FOUNDERS, INVESTORS & OPERATORS

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