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2025 is speed-running the future — and tripping over the basics. More than 230 million records were breached worldwide, from U.S. agencies to routine monthly attacks in South Korea, yet plans are underway for a Moon landing by 2028 and a lunar base by 2030. Apparently, securing databases is harder than colonizing space.
Meanwhile, ByteDance is handing U.S. control of TikTok to local investors to end its regulatory saga, while a new $669M fund bets on minting unicorns across Asia.
Video pick: The ONE thing Investors look for in Startups
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Six bullets of updates
🛡️ 2025 saw over 230 million records breached worldwide, from U.S. agencies to monthly attacks in South Korea.
🌕 NASA targets a Moon landing by 2028 and a lunar base by 2030 after Trump’s order refocused ambitions for human and commercial discovery.
🇺🇸 ByteDance will hand U.S. control of TikTok to local investors, settling a years-long battle with regulators.
🦄 Backed by $669M, a new fund plans to back unicorn-scale startups across Asia over the next four years.
📸 Meta targets an H1 2026 release for multimedia AI models that generate both images, video, and help code with new text-based tools.
🤖 ChatGPT’s free tier drops the model router after users reported slower and less accurate answers in recent months.
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From “infinite growth” to “let’s talk headcount”
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
The AI boom is cooling. After years of aggressive hiring, major labs may face their first meaningful layoffs as they trim teams, refocus on proven bets, and try to reach an IPO window before valuations compress. Capital is still flowing, but the mood is shifting from hype to discipline.
At the same time, new risks are emerging: local backlash against U.S. data centers could grow as AI-generated misinformation amplifies real zoning and power concerns, slowing compute expansion. Inside companies, tools that record workflows to train AI agents raise fresh consent and compliance issues, while progress in robotics and robotaxis remains cautious. The winners will be those who build with clear data rights, strong guardrails, and measurable ROI — and who hire for systems and safety, not just model builders.
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The ONE thing Investors look for in Startups
In 2021, nearly 35,000 funding rounds took place globally, including 20,000 Angel and Seed rounds, and while angel investing dipped during the pandemic, venture capital surged to over $600 billion — double the previous year — yet funding remained rare, with fewer than 4,500 of the 5 million new U.S. businesses raising early-stage VC (just 0.08%), highlighting how few startups are considered “venture-backable” and why we expanded our product to support all founders, not just VC-backed ones.
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Get 10 Hrs Back This Week
Founders are paying for time, not tasks. When they’re losing 10–20 hours a week, missing revenue, and burning out, a fractional EA becomes the cheaper, saner move.
Our guide shows how to reclaim capacity fast and convert regained hours into growth, margin, and actual breathing room.
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📺 2026 marketing pivots to intent, social SEO, and CTV—allocate 5–15% for cross-channel tests to prove lift.
🏠 One early choice—your business address—can expose your home and stall growth via public state filings and fees.
💳 Identity-led orchestration cut onboarding to under a minute, uniting banks and a wallet with 100M+ users.
🤝 5 battle-tested tips can turn skeptics into loyal advocates and build durable advantage for any business.
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.
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OpenAI’s $100B reminder that scale wins
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
OpenAI is in talks to raise a massive $100B round at a valuation of about $830B, with a goal to close by the end of Q1 2026 and funding likely coming from sovereign wealth funds. The reason is simple: cutting-edge AI requires enormous computing power, and the cost of running and scaling these models is staggering.
If the deal goes through, it would strengthen OpenAI’s position by enabling more custom infrastructure, faster model improvements, and flexibility ahead of a potential IPO. It would also set a new benchmark for private fundraising, signal long-term demand to cloud providers and chipmakers, and intensify pressure on competitors to raise capital. Still, risks remain — AI hype could cool, hardware constraints could slow progress, and geopolitical concerns around sovereign funding could complicate the deal.
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