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Crypto keeps promising a breakthrough moment, but its adoption problem still fits in a wallet. While China plans to drive 15% of its GDP from AI, startups are building tabletop fusion reactors, and AI doctors are already seeing patients for free, crypto users are still expected to memorize seed phrases and avoid one wrong click. Across tech, ambition is scaling faster than infrastructure.
Video pick: Why Unprofitable Startups Are Popular (Again)
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Eight bullets of updates
🤖 China targets 15% of GDP from AI by 2035, aiming to balance rapid growth with tight political control .
🌎 Drilling could unlock hydrogen at under $1/kg, opening doors for cleaner, cheaper on-site energy at scale.
🛡️ India’s top court grills WhatsApp on sharing user data with parent Meta and user consent for its 400M+ users.
👔 PayPal taps CFO/COO Jamie Miller as interim CEO amid transition, holding the seat through March 1.
🤖 Companies face $8.5T in productivity gains if they embrace upskilling workers for the AI era rather than leaving them behind.
🩺 AI “doctor” now licensed nationwide and sees patients for free after raising $35M from top VCs.
📈 TikTok rebounds from a 13% drop in daily active users, as app engagement bounces back post-ownership shakeup.
🛂 Tech leaders are pushing back as immigration crackdowns prompt over 560 industry signatories to denounce ICE tactics.
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Everyone’s building giant fusion reactors. These guys aren’t.
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
A fusion startup just raised $29M by taking a very different approach: building much smaller reactors. Its current device is about the size of a coin, and a slightly larger version is designed to produce enough energy to break even.
The team moves fast, testing new versions twice a week at a shared fusion lab that even lets competitors rent space. Their goal is to get approval to use tritium fuel by 2027.
Why this matters: small, modular fusion systems could power remote locations, military sites, or energy-hungry AI data centers, while massive fusion projects focus on the main power grid. The catch is that fusion is extremely hard, and real energy breakeven is still years away.
Investors including Founders Fund, RA Capital, Lowercarbon, and Toyota Ventures have backed the idea. Total funding is $80M—small for fusion, and intentionally so.
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Why Unprofitable Startups Are Popular (Again)
Investors want startups to lose money again.
After 2023 punished unprofitable companies, the script has flipped. In this episode, Caya breaks down why profitability suddenly matters less — and how AI has reshaped fundraising so that more money is flowing to fewer startups.
We explain the current funding cycle, why milestones matter more than burn right now, how seed and pre-seed rounds quietly ballooned into old-school Series A sizes, and what founders actually need to optimize for if they plan to raise again.
If you’re fundraising this year, this video is about knowing which currency investors care about — and when that inevitably changes.
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Equipment policies break when you hire globally
Deel’s latest policy template on IT Equipment Policies can help HR teams stay organized when handling requests across time zones (and even languages). This free template gives you:
Clear provisioning rules across all countries
Security protocols that prevent compliance gaps
Return processes that actually work remotely
This free equipment provisioning policy will enable you to adjust to any state or country you hire from instead of producing a new policy every time. That means less complexity and more time for greater priorities.
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🧭 Use mentors to pressure-test assumptions, not replace authority — 3 takeaways to cut blind spots this quarter.
AI Pitch Deck Reviewer
Slidebean has been helping startups craft pitch decks for over 10 years.
We recently built an AI Pitch Deck Review tool, that processes the text and visuals on your presentation, and provides actionable feedback on the story, potential missing items, and recommendations on how to improve each slide.
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Crypto’s adoption problem fits in a wallet
Photo by Pierre Borthiry - Peiobty on Unsplash
Crypto keeps talking about mainstream adoption, but wallets are still the weak spot. Users are asked to manage seed phrases, approve confusing transactions, and trust brittle browser extensions—hardly the foundation of a global financial system.
The problem isn’t the apps, it’s the wallet layer itself. Treating wallets as infrastructure means moving away from seed phrases and blind “sign” buttons, and toward safer, account-based systems with better defaults.
For builders, that shifts the focus from flashy features to fundamentals: passkeys, shared custody, session keys, and mobile-first designs that work in the real world. This matters even more for AI agents and users in emerging markets, where today’s flows simply break.
If startups don’t fix the plumbing, crypto won’t scale. The next battle won’t be prettier interfaces—it’ll be standards, safety, and trust.