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Today’s edition is peak 2025 energy: Meta hits pause because its AI can’t count, Amazon bets another $35B on India, and OpenAI scoops Slack’s CEO to sell even more AI to people who still misuse Slack.
We’ve got networks melting under video traffic, startups reinventing shopping (again), and a16z funding “infinite courses” because sure, why not.
Plus: the real lithium story from Chile, the at-home diagnostics play that might outgrow fertility, and Washington’s ongoing love–hate saga with Nvidia’s chips.
Let’s dive.
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Seven bullets of updates
🥑 Meta puts its AI plans on hold after internal tests showed error rates as high as 34%.
🚚 Amazon boosts its India bet with $35B more by 2030 to digitize small businesses and expand logistics.
🌐 Surging AI and video traffic is pushing networks to adopt optical automation as global bandwidth use doubles every two years.
🤝 AI giants join forces to develop open standards after months of talks, aiming for transparency and safer tech.
🛒 Channel3 lands $6M to build a universal product graph, aiming to power smarter, AI-driven online shopping for everyone.
💼 Slack CEO Denise Dresser joins OpenAI as chief revenue officer to steer its enterprise growth and drive new customer strategy.
🎓 Users can now generate unlimited courses for free after Oboe’s $16M round led by a16z.
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Inito Raises $29M to Advance AI-Designed At-Home Health Test Technology
Credit: inito.com
Fertility tester Inito just raised $29M to build AI-designed antibodies that boost accuracy and unlock new at‑home assays.
If it works, that’s a shift from “pee sticks” to a platform: tighter limits of detection, faster assay launches, better margins, and B2B licensing upside.
Key risks: CLIA‑waived/510(k) timelines, antibody manufacturing yields, and incumbent pushback. Win here and they could expand at‑home tests beyond fertility into broader chronic and infectious panels.
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AThe (NEW) Most Valuable Plot of Land in America
Hidden in the Atacama Desert, this place produces billions in lithium each year… and could hold trillions more. Lithium powers EVs, your phone, solar storage, medicine, glass; basically the entire carbon-neutral future we’re trying to build. But as we discovered on this trip, the metal that could save the world is also destroying their world.
This video uncovers the real Lithium Triangle, why Chile dominates global extraction, and how the world’s clean-energy boom is quietly draining one of the driest places on Earth. And more importantly: the tech that could fix it, before it’s too late.
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Washington Can’t Decide What to Do With Nvidia’s Chips
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash
Commerce is weighing licenses that could approve H200 exports to China, loosening the tourniquet on training clusters while guardrails stay TBD.
The twist: Congress just floated a bill to block exports, turning policy into a tug‑of‑war between revenue, allies, and security hawks.
If approvals land, Chinese clouds get near‑frontier compute; suppliers book revenue; startups see longer lead times and heavier KYC. Expect caps on volumes, interconnects, and end‑users; think H20‑style under EAR. The real tell will be key licensing details and quantities set in coming weeks.
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