brought to you with
✦
Big moves, quiet consequences.
Layoffs, pay-for-privacy, AI everywhere, and energy becoming the real bottleneck.
Mozilla picks a fight, nuclear gets a second act, and the rest of the week reminds us where the power is actually shifting.
-😎
✦
Six bullets of updates
🚚 A $750M raise fuels plans to deploy 25,000 robotaxis via Uber, accelerating Waabi's autonomous trucking ambitions.
🤖 Pinterest is cutting 15% of its workforce to double down on AI-powered products and teams for future growth.
📱 Meta is testing ad-free plans in Europe, letting users pay €9.99/month for Instagram and Facebook—privacy, for a price.
💡 Europe bets big on smart energy controls that could slash demand by up to 25% amid shifting energy strategy.
🌱 German startup secures €6.5M to scale up CO₂-negative materials technology for greener construction.
⚡ Finanzen.net Group boosts its AI-powered services by adding Vickii’s robo-advisory tech to reach its 6.5M monthly users.
✦
Mozilla Launches $1.4B AI Safety and Governance Startup Alliance
Mark Surman, Mozilla Foundation’s president
Mozilla is assembling a “rebel alliance” to counter AI heavyweights; less a new org than a loose network of builders pushing open, trustworthy models. Think Firefox‑vs‑IE energy, minus the lightsabers.
The plan: tapping roughly $1.4B in reserves via investments and grants, peanuts next to OpenAI/Anthropic, but enough to seed governance tooling, open‑source stacks, and leverage Firefox/Pocket distribution.
Implications: more founder‑friendly capital and standards pressure on incumbents; real risks are compute costs and coalition herding. If it lands, expect a Red Hat–style layer for AI; if not, centralization keeps marching.
✦
How Your City Was Fooled by Fake AI Surveillance
ShotSpotter promised to use AI to detect gunfire, dispatch police faster, and make cities safer. Instead, it quietly put millions of Americans under constant audio surveillance, triggered thousands of false alarms, and became one of the most controversial government tech contractors in the country.
In this video, we travel to Chicago — one of ShotSpotter’s biggest customers — to investigate how the system actually works, why so many alerts never lead to real crimes, and how internal reclassification of audio turned a safety product into a legal and ethical nightmare. This is the story of how flawed data, lobbying, and surveillance tech collided — and why once a city buys into systems like this, it’s almost impossible to walk away.
✦
Run Your Social Media Like You Just IPO'd
If your social media isn't running itself yet, let's get you caught up to 2026.
It used to cost a lot of time and money to be active on social. Not anymore.
Munch Studio is quietly becoming the best AI tool of 2026 by making your social media presence effortless.
Try it free. Thank us later.
✦
💸 Northvolt’s ex-CEO says it was "emotionally tough" to raise funds after a $5.8B collapse for his new venture.
🏈 The 'losingest' program went 16-0 with 3 top‑5 wins; leaders can turn belief and execution into advantage.
SaaS Growth Calculator
A growth calculator that lets you forecast the impact of your ARPU (average revenue per user) and Churn Rate on the long-term potential of your subscription business.
✦
Nuclear Funding Surge Driven by AI-Related Power Demand
Photo by Nicolas HIPPERT on Unsplash
Nuclear is having its GPU moment: a16z and others backed Standard Nuclear, which closed a $140M round to scale components and services as reactors re-enter the chat.
The smart money is on the picks-and-shovels of nuclear; HALEU fuel, heavy forgings, control systems, EPC, O&M—because AI data centers want 24/7 clean power. Think uranium-flavored pickaxes for the GPU gold rush.
Upside: long PPAs, federal loans, utility demand. Risks: HALEU scarcity, NRC timelines, labor, and capex discipline; if schedules slip, gas + renewables + storage fill the gap. Watch regulatory and supply-chain risk, where margins and delays get decided.
We’re breaking this down in an upcoming video; stay tuned on our YouTube channel.
✦
Startup Events and Deadlines
Today! Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Jan 29 l Webinar
Startmate l Jan 31 l Accelerator deadline
✦
How did we do?
