brought to you with
✦
Scammers are pumping out 100,000 fake texts an hour, Amazon is training humanoid robots with AR glasses, and Meta wants you to flick your wrist to control your smart shades—welcome to 2025, where the line between sci-fi and scam call is thinner than ever. Meanwhile, Oracle’s chasing its trillion-dollar glow-up, Indian creators are turning bananas into AI-fueled viral art, and Bumble is trying to make friend groups cool again.
🎙️ Our amazing podcast is back! Slidebean Stand-Up, where we go deeper into the stories shaping startup land.
🎥 Video pick of the day: The business of treating pets like children 🐕
-🕶️
✦
Eight bullets of updates
📱 Scammers now blast out 100,000 scam texts per hour using fake towers—and mobile carriers can’t block them.
🍌 Indian creators turn Google’s Nano Banana into a viral trend engine with 4M+ AI selfies, mixing retro art and quirky figurine styles.
🕶️ Amazon tests AR glasses to help workers train its humanoid robots faster, blending tech and humans on the warehouse floor.
🛡️ Two critical flaws nearly let attackers breach virtually all Azure accounts, risking data exposure for millions.
🛍️ Nearly 65% of shoppers now want to skip human contact in-store, reshaping what physical retail needs to deliver.
🌱 Repurposed tech slashes CO2 removal costs and uses up to 30% less electricity than rivals, says DACLab.
🤝 Bumble BFF users can now join friend groups and connect with up to 15 people at once with its revamped app.
😎 Meta debuts smart glasses with built-in displays and a gesture wristband, reshaping how we interact with wearables.
✦
Groq Goes for the GPU Throne: $750M, Big FOMO, and Nvidia in the Crosshairs
Photo by unavailable parts on Unsplash
AI chip darling Groq just banked $750M at a $6.9B valuation, breezing past last year’s numbers and leaving July’s rumored $600M haul in the dust.
Armed with over $3B in total funding, it’s doubling down on taking Nvidia’s AI crown. Their custom Language Processing Units—think GPUs reimagined for large language models—are serving up more than 2M developers this year, a 6x+ jump from 2023.
Investors with serious FOMO (BlackRock, Samsung, Cisco, Altimeter) have joined the party. With inference workloads exploding and demand rising for alternatives in AI compute—especially as Nvidia’s grip tightens—the chip arms race is getting spicy.
✦
The business of treating pets like children - Millennials decoded
A burning house, a baby, and a dog—who do you save?
Our instincts reveal generational shifts in values, as pets increasingly rival children in family roles. With U.S. households now favoring pets over kids, the $136B pet industry is only just heating up.
🕶️ More videos here 🕶️
✦
Attio — AI-native CRM for startups
Sync your email and calendar and watch Attio build your custom CRM in minutes — keeping customers, investors, and partners on the same page from day one.
Automate your workflows with AI
Manage your GTM engine with zero engineering lift.
Track investor conversations with dynamic reporting
Join the next-gen startups like Snackpass, Conduit, and Flatfile scaling faster with Attio.
✦
Investor Data Room Checklist
An investor data room is a storage space, digital or physical, where companies store information relevant to due diligence. We've compiled a FREE Template/Checklist of all the items your data room should include and resources and tools for obtaining them.
✦
Oracle’s $1 trillion glow-up: AI, hyperscalers, and Wall Street FOMO
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
Oracle’s stock is approaching the $1 trillion mark, driven by rapid expansion in its data center footprint, dominance in multicloud operations, and the rollout of its Oracle AI Database. Demand from hyperscalers like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft has fueled over 1500% growth in AI infrastructure services, with forecasts pointing to continued acceleration. Analysts note that Oracle’s revenue projections remain too low given its massive contracted backlog and expected new deals, with institutional investors and Chairman Larry Ellison holding a combined 84% stake. Market signals—including bullish price action, strong volume trends, and consistent analyst upgrades—indicate further upside, with price targets reaching as high as $410. While currently rated a Moderate Buy, Oracle’s fundamentals, AI-driven growth, and potential capital returns position it to sustain momentum and exceed $1 trillion valuation.
✦
Startup Events and Deadlines
Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Sep 24 l Webinar
Slidebean’s Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Sep 25 l Webinar
Antler Canada | Deadline: Sept 29 | Canada
500 Startups Flagship Accelerator l Deadline: Oct 11 l USA
Mental Health Tech Summit 2025 l October 15 l NYC