🕶️ TikTok Turns Risk Signals Into Real-World Alerts

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Founders are building tools after burning $20K on bad hires, investors are throwing billions at self-driving cars (and freight players betting $333M autonomy isn’t a fad), and OpenAI is staffing up in London for an AI talent cage match.

Governments are tightening data rules, devs are launching a $10M fund to save open source, and TikTok is rolling out parent alerts when teen search history gets serious. Growth is hot — but so is accountability.

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Nine bullets of updates

🕵️ Lucena’s quest to avoid costly hiring mistakes led to Mappa—after wasting $20K on mis-hires for her startup.
🚗 Investors pile into autonomous driving as Wayve lands $1.8B to scale embodied AI for self-driving cars.
🌍 Nations now require more data localization, impacting 75% of global users and demanding sharper compliance from startups.
🤖 OpenAI is expanding its London office, aiming to double its UK research headcount and rival DeepMind for top AI talent.
🛠️ Leading devs and a VC launch a $10M fund to solve open source’s cash crunch for good.
🤝 A new alliance will deploy custom AI for European firms, helping accelerate enterprise adoption across 12+ industries.
⚡ After running 2,600+ nuclear simulations, the famous supercomputer faces decommissioning after seven years of service.
🎮 Messaging games could soon bypass app stores after a new $7M seed round aims to shake up platform rules for chat-based gaming.
📏 Advertisers can now reuse creative assets across platforms with X’s expanded aspect ratio support for images and videos.

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Self-driving Freight bets $333M it’s not a fad

Photo by Seb Creativo on Unsplash

A self-driving freight company is going public through a SPAC merger with Legato, after raising a heavily oversubscribed $113 million PIPE round. The deal values the company at $1.35 billion pre-money, with a planned NYSE listing in the first half of 2026. Including Legato’s trust, the company expects up to $333 million in proceeds—assuming shareholders don’t redeem their SPAC shares.

The fresh capital will fund expansion of its autonomous freight pods and a fleet of 200+ electric trucks across Europe, the U.S., and the UAE, while deepening partnerships with major shippers. The broader message: autonomous trucking is still alive—but it’s capital-intensive, and success will depend on tight unit economics and efficient deployment in the middle mile.

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Valuation can feel like a black box—especially early on. This webinar breaks it down into the parts you can actually influence, and how investors typically think about pricing a startup.

In this live session, we’ll cover:

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✅ How stage, traction, and market shape your range
✅ How comparables work (and how investors use them)
✅ The relationship between valuation, dilution, and your round size
✅ How to sanity-check numbers and avoid common mistakes in negotiations
✅ For founders who want a realistic valuation range before they start fundraising conversations

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Accounting That Scales With You

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🤝 Real growth came when I stopped performing and started building human connections that compound beyond the room.
🧭 Mentors should set standards— not everyone’s built for founder life as 50% of new firms fail by year 3.
🛠️ Launch a 1-person biz on near-zero budget—prioritize early revenue over scale and polish using your existing skills.

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TikTok’s new alert: when search history gets serious

Photo by Swello on Unsplash

TikTok is introducing a new safety feature for families using its parental supervision tools. If a teen repeatedly searches for suicide or self-harm–related terms, TikTok will alert their parents and provide resources to help them start a conversation. The goal isn’t to boost engagement — it’s to flag potential warning signs early. The alerts only apply to accounts where Family Pairing (supervision) is turned on.

The feature rolls out next week in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada, with more regions to follow. TikTok also plans to expand alerts to certain AI chat interactions.

For tech companies more broadly, this reflects growing pressure to build stronger safety systems — balancing accurate risk detection with privacy concerns, false positives, and the reality that teens often find workarounds.