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Tag: startups

  • Zak Williams Brings His Mental Health Mission to This A.I. Startup: Interview

    Driven by personal experience, Zak Williams is helping shape an A.I. platform designed to improve how mental illness is diagnosed and treated. Elizabeth Weinberg

    As ChatGPT moves to encompass the full scope of health care, others are taking a more nuanced approach. One is Headlamp Health, whose new intelligence platform, Lumos AI, aims to advance a research field that has long stalled for drug developers, clinical trial researchers and clinicians working to solve complex mental health challenges in even more complex patients.

    With an advisory board that includes investor, entrepreneur and mental health advocate Zak Williams—the son of the late actor Robin Williams—Headlamp officially launched Lumos on Jan. 7. The platform is designed as a coordinated set of agentic A.I. layers meant to bring precision medicine to a space that has long lacked it.

    “I never thought I’d go into the mental health space,” Williams told Observer. “But after my father died by suicide, and I was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and depression, I found myself in need of solutions.”

    That experience led Williams to work with Headlamp Health, where he advises on both the technology and its market positioning. He saw not only a need for reinvention in psychiatry, but also an opportunity to help others where he could.

    Erwin Estigarribia, CEO of Headlamp Health, who previously focused on oncology and cardiology technology, has his own reasons for entering the psychiatry tech space. “I was exposed to the mental health side of medicine through family members and personal circumstances, and realized, holy smokes, the entire field is about 20 years behind cancer and cardiology,” Estigarribia told Observer.

    Bringing precision medicine to psychiatry

    Robin Williams suffered from the brain disease Lewy body dementia, a diagnosis discovered only through autopsy and later made public by his wife, Susan Schneider Williams. During his life, he sought treatment for what appeared—even to medical experts—to be unrelated symptoms, including tremors, delusions and high cortisol levels. Prior to his suicide, he was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. As many as half of the people with Lewy body dementia are misdiagnosed.

    The problem extends far beyond one illness. Schizoaffective disorder is misdiagnosed 75 percent of the time, while even the more common major depressive disorder is misdiagnosed in more than half of cases.

    As precision medicine becomes the standard in fields like oncology, psychiatry continues to lag behind. But multilayered A.I. systems are beginning to close the gap. Lumos AI has several core use cases: identifying patient subtypes most likely to benefit from a given therapy; making clinical trials more efficient and effective; de-risking drug development; and modeling how patients change over time.

    To power that work, Headlamp has compiled at least 100 million data points—both proprietary and from external health data sources, spanning decades of research. These are fed into layered A.I. frameworks designed to answer a central question: What is the right therapy for the right patient at the right time?

    Williams said much of recent A.I. in mental health has focused on automation, but Lumos is built differently. “It’s structured to help identify responder versus nonresponder populations way earlier in development,” he said. “Then, leveraging that longitudinal, real-world and behavioral data informs trial design and treatment matching.”

    With clinicians and researchers kept in the loop, decisions come from the “better organization of data, which then leads to better inference and better causal reasoning,” Williams said.

    Mental illness is largely episodic and invisible. “We can’t take a picture of depression [or] anxiety,” Estigarribia said. “Measuring it reliably in the blood is something that we’re not able to do due to the blood-brain barrier, which essentially isolates the organ of interest that we’re interested in studying.” Tools that better isolate and interpret the contributing factors behind psychiatric conditions could drive a sea change for millions of people simply trying to get through each day.

    Headlamp Health CEO Erwin Estigarribia in a navy blue jacketHeadlamp Health CEO Erwin Estigarribia in a navy blue jacket
    Headlamp Health CEO Erwin Estigarribia. Courtesey Headlamp Health

    Roughly 49,000 people in the U.S. died by suicide in 2024, according to provisional U.S. Census data. Research suggests an average of 135 people are significantly affected by each suicide death—people who may themselves need mental health support.

    In clinical settings, Estigarribia said Lumos AI’s suicide prevention impact was not the original goal, but has been a welcome outcome. “Being able to provide clinicians an A.I.-driven real-time view of their [patients] and highlight who is trending positive, negative or neutral since their last visit has actually led to several tragedies being averted.”

    On the research side, as federal funding shrinks for the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, platforms like Lumos can help researchers find efficiencies that keep essential studies moving forward. Beyond the statistics, those advances translate into real changes in individual lives.

    Improving life, not just delaying death

    Other companies are also using A.I. to streamline clinical trials, from patient-matching platforms like BEKHealth to decentralized trial tools such as Datacubed Health. Headlamp, however, is targeting a narrower and less-served niche: working directly with neuroscience researchers, psychiatric drug developers and frontline clinicians, with psychiatry as its sole focus rather than the broader life sciences.

    “Because we are the primary aggregator of all types of data, we want people to innovate on wearables, advanced imaging, blood biomarkers [and] cognitive therapies,” Estigarribia said. “We will collaborate, share data and work with anybody whose mission aligns with ours.” The key to tackling such large problems, he added, is to “stay humble, develop gratitude and be collaborative.”

    Using A.I. to process sensitive psychiatric health data for clinical decision support carries risks, especially around privacy. As Alexander Tsiaras, founder and CEO of the A.I.-driven medical records platform StoryMD, previously told Observer regarding ChatGPT Health, strong encryption is now an industry standard. The real question, he said, is, “Once you have the data, can you trust them?”

    For Williams, who is highly selective about his partnerships, Headlamp met his criteria, including in the area of trust. He evaluated the company and its technology by asking: “Are there good people involved with the organization? Do these people care deeply about how these outcomes are being delivered, how it’s improving the lives of folks, and is it contributing to the greater benefit of humanity?”

    Another concern is the integrity of the A.I. itself. Williams pointed to the risk of semantic collapse, in which systems fail as data volume overwhelms reasoning. “There’s a critical need to shift from data volume to data reasoning, to focus on actionable insight,” he said, adding that this is precisely what Headlamp aims to do with Lumos.

    Robin Williams, in his role as Patch Adams in the 1998 film about the real-life physician, once said, “Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.”

    Through Headlamp, Estigarribia and his team are trying to live up to that idea. “If I don’t feel safe enough for [Lumos] to be used by my own mother, then it’s not something that we can deploy,” he said.

    Zak Williams Brings His Mental Health Mission to This A.I. Startup: Interview

    Rachel Curry

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  • A 22-Year-Old Founder Wants to Build the Moon’s First Hotel by 2032

    Skyler Chan launched GRU last year. Courtesy GRU Space

    Civilian travel to the Moon remains years away, but a California startup is already making plans to host overnight guests there. GRU Space, founded by 22-year-old entrepreneur Skyler Chan, is taking deposits ranging from $250,000 to $1 million for a lunar hotel that has yet to be built.

    “If we solve off-world surface habitation, it’s going to lead to this explosion. We could have billions of human lives maybe born on the Moon and Mars,” Chan told Observer. He founded GRU last year after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, and previously interned at Tesla.

    The hotel, which the company expects to open by 2032, will initially consist of an inflatable structure designed to accommodate up to four guests for multi-day stays. Over time, it would evolve into a brick building inspired by San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. More ambitiously, GRU argues that the project could do more than jump-start space tourism—an industry it sees as essential to sustaining a future lunar ecosystem—and instead lay the groundwork for entire cities beyond Earth.

    Chan founded GRU with the goal of building the first permanent structure off Earth. His team includes founding technical staff member Kevin Cannon, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, and advisor Robert Lillis, who also serves as associate director for planetary science at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. The startup has received seed funding from Y Combinator, joined Nvidia’s Inception Program and counts SpaceX and Anduril among its investors.

    GRU’s initial target customers include adventurers, repeat spaceflight participants and couples looking to elevate their honeymoon plans. While final pricing has not been set, the company said a stay would likely cost more than $10 million and require a $1,000 non-refundable application fee.

    The project’s first milestone is slated for 2029, when GRU plans to launch an initial lunar mission to assess environmental conditions and begin early construction experiments. Two years later, another payload will land near a lunar pit chosen for its protection from radiation and temperatures, with initial hotel development targeted for 2032.

    Animated image of the front door of a hotel with lit up windows Animated image of the front door of a hotel with lit up windows
    A rendering of GRU’s lunar hotel. Courtesy GRU Space

    Chan acknowledged that GRU’s timelines are estimates, but argued that bold ambition is necessary to make progress. “We need to really shoot for the literal moon,” he said.

    According to Chan, today’s space industry is dominated by two forces: governments and billionaire-backed companies. He hopes space tourism can become a third pillar. “Lunar tourism is the best first wedge to spin up the lunar economy,” he said.

    The concept aligns with broader government goals. Lunar tourism has emerged as a focus of U.S. space policy, with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently outlining the nation’s plans to construct a permanent base on the Moon by the end of the decade. NASA wants “to have that opportunity to explore and realize the scientific, economic and national security potential on the moon,” he told CNBC last month.

    GRU says it is well positioned to contribute to those ambitions, with plans that extend far beyond a single hotel. After completing its lodge, the company plans to build roads, warehouses and other infrastructure—first on the Moon, then on Mars. Eventually, it hopes to reinvest profits into resource utilization systems on the Moon, Mars and asteroids.

    “If we’re able to understand how to use resources on the Moon and Mars and beyond, that is going to enable us to not be tethered to Earth, and start being interplanetary,” said Chan. “It’s a Promethean moment.”

    A 22-Year-Old Founder Wants to Build the Moon’s First Hotel by 2032

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Tech Companies Show Feet as They Try to Appeal to Gen Z

    Over the last year or so, Silicon Valley made an all-out push for employees to return to the office. Now that the industry has people back at their desks, it’s trying to figure out how to make them happy. The influx of office dwellers, including a growing number of Gen Z representatives, has the Valley trying new things, like shoeless offices.

    According to the New York Times, the “no shoes” movement has picked up steam at startups, with businesses encouraging employees to leave their kicks at the door. Ben Lang, an employee at the shoeless AI coding company Cursor, launched a website called Noshoes.fun that tracks the options for prospective employees who like to let their toes get some fresh air. The list includes digital workspace maker Notion, payroll company Gusto, mobile games developer Supercell, and a number of AI-centric startups like Replicate and Rime Labs.

    Now, whether going shoeless around others really adds much comfort to your work day is probably a matter of personal preference. But the idea behind it, per the Times, is to allow employees who are being made to go back to commuting to work some of the same comfort they once had while working from home. It is also apparently, in part, because the workforce at these offices skews young, and these companies are trying to figure out what exactly it is that Gen Z wants.

    Elsewhere, they’re going less for regenerative and more degenerate. According to the Wall Street Journal, some startups have started filling the snack bar with Zyn and other nicotine pouches. Palantir—the surveillance tech company run by Trump-aligned, pro-war crime CEO Alex Karp—has apparently been on the front lines of this push, presumably because the hit from the pouches is the only thing that allows its employees to calm down after pushing out a new update to improve the efficacy of murder drones.

    At this point, corporate America’s general confusion as to how to accommodate a younger cohort that generally seems to expect more of its employer than generations before it. Executives have labeled Gen Z as things like “undisciplined,” “entitled,” and “lazy”—though frankly, every generation seems to go through this slander as they enter the workforce.

    But the cultural divide seems to be about as big as it’s ever been. According to a report from CBS News, some companies are even going so far as to send their Gen Z employees to etiquette classes so they can learn how to behave in mixed company settings like an office.

    Interpreted as friendly as possible, the trend is an attempt to help Gen Z get up to speed on some of the lessons it may have missed by having a chunk of its socialization period stolen by a global pandemic. Taken a little less generously, it’s corporate entities trying to push a generation of people who have more expectations of work-life balance, better boundaries around their time and effort, and demand more respect from their bosses to fall in line with an industry that pushes work over everything. Given that, it’s hard to imagine that letting people stand at the water cooler in socks and slippers is going to win them over.

    AJ Dellinger

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  • Clicks debuts its own take on the BlackBerry smartphone, plus a $79 snap-on mobile keyboard | TechCrunch

    Clicks Technology, a company known for making physical keyboards for smartphones, is launching two new devices ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. In addition to a new, $79 slide-out keyboard for smart devices, the company is also unveiling its first smartphone: the Communicator, a smartphone with a physical keyboard, designed to be carried as your second device.

    Yes, it looks a lot like a BlackBerry. (Quick, someone tell Kim Kardashian, famous BlackBerry hoarder.)

    Image Credits:Clicks

    The $499 smartphone is described as being “purpose-built” for people who carry two phones — one for work and one for personal use. That is, the company believes its market will be people who do a lot of actual work on their devices — meaning messaging, emailing, working with documents, or other things where using a physical keyboard could be an advantage.

    While it offers a screen for viewing and responding to messages, the Communicator doesn’t provide access to addictive social media apps or games. Instead, the company partnered with the maker of an Android launcher, Niagara Launcher, to provide access to messaging apps and productivity tools like Gmail, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Slack.

    The phone’s standout feature is its Signal Light, a light-up button on the side of the device that can be customized with different colors and light patterns to indicate when you’ve received messages from certain people, groups, or apps. For instance, you could make messages from VIPs glow purple while chats from WhatsApp are green.

    Image Credits:Clicks

    You can press on this button, known as the Prompt Key, to dictate messages when you’re in a text field, or otherwise take a quick voice note, if not. The company is teasing the possibility of integrating AI applications with this button — like note takers, voice recordings, or AI agents — but nothing like that is yet available.

    Like Clicks’ other products, the Communicator features a tactile keyboard with ergonomic keys designed for faster typing. The keyboard is touch-sensitive, too, allowing users to scroll through messages, lists, and web pages without needing to use the touchscreen.

    Image Credits:Clicks

    The device also includes other old-school features, like a 3.5 mm headphone jack, physical SIM card tray (in addition to an eSIM), expandable microSD storage (up to 2TB), and a tactile switch for turning on or off airplane mode. This switch can also be configured to work with the Signal light or keyboard touch input, the company says.

    The back cover can be popped off so you can change the device’s style by swapping to a different color. The phone itself comes in Smoke, Clover (dark green), and Onyx.

    Image Credits:Clicks

    The device will be offered at $399 for early-bird customers who place a $199 deposit before February 27. Customers who pay the full early-bird price of $399 up front will receive two additional back covers. The phone is expected to ship sometime later this year.

    The phone’s full tech specs include:

    • Android 16 with 5 years of security updates
    • 131.5 mm tall; weighing 170 grams
    • Global 5G, 4G LTE, and 3G/2G support, unlocked
    • 4,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery
    • 256GB onboard storage plus expandable microSD
    • 50MP main camera with OIS and 24MP front camera
    • NFC with Google Pay, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 6
    • USB-C and wireless charging
    • Interchangeable back covers in different colors to personalize the device
    Image Credits:Clicks

    Clicks CEO Adrian Li noted in an announcement that the company has shipped more than 100,000 of its earlier keyboards to customers in over 100 countries.

    “That response validated something we strongly believed: There’s growing demand for purpose-built products that help people communicate with confidence and take action. Clicks Communicator is a natural evolution of that idea,” he stated.

    Image Credits:Clicks

    The company’s other new product is a slide-out keyboard that can be attached to smartphones, tablets, or even used with smart TVs, to save you from the tedious on-screen typing with your remote control.

    The keyboard is powered by a built-in 2,150 mAh battery and attaches to phones via MagSafe or Qi2 magnetic connections. It can also be used with existing phone cases, the company claims. Multiple slider positions allow the keyboard to accommodate different phone sizes, and it can be attached when the phone is held in either portrait or landscape mode.

    Image Credits:Clicks

    When used with tablets, TVs, or other smart devices, like AR/VR headsets, the keyboard is used independently from the device it’s paired with.

    Similar to other Clicks keyboards, the Power Keyboard offers tactile buttons, and its settings can be customized using the Clicks mobile app for iOS and Android

    The Power Keyboard is priced at $79 for early-bird customers and will later retail for $109. Preorders start on January 2; the device should ship in the spring, the company says.

    Sarah Perez

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  • Tade Oyerinde and Teddy Solomon talk about building engaged audiences at TechCrunch Disrupt | TechCrunch

    Tade Oyerinde and Teddy Solomon know a few things about building communities that last.  

    Afterall, Oyerinde is the founder and chancellor of the online school Campus, while Solomon is the co-founder behind the college social app Fizz. 

    The two spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt this year, breaking down the strategies that helped them scale their companies while retaining consumer interest. 

    Campus offers associate degrees in areas like information technology and business administration. It also offers certificates in specialities like cosmetology and phlebotomy. There are more than 3,000 students enrolled in Campus, and it employs more than 100 professors on at least a part-time basis, Oyerinde says.  

    Oyerinde said Campus decided to launch à la carte courses since employers, in particular, have been asking for classes that can teach their employees individual skills like vibe coding.  

    He’s realized that a lot of people are looking to upskill and believes that in the future, everyone will have some sort of membership or subscription service that helps them develop new skills.  

    “Everyone in this room, not just two-year degree-seeking people, will be able to go to Campus and learn with us,” he told the audience. “Live, online classes, taught by amazing people.”  

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    Teddy Solomon; TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 Day 3 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct 29, 2025. ( Photo By Slava Blazer Photography )Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography / Flickr (opens in a new window)

    Oyerinde makes use of the Pell Grant to help keep the school affordable for most people. He also has a team of billionaires on his company’s cap table — like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Discord’s Jason Citroen — meaning he doesn’t feel much pressure to focus on profits above all else, he said.

    “They don’t need the money,” he continued. “What they really want is to fundamentally shape the way that education works in this country for the better.”  

    Fizz, meanwhile, operates on more than 200 college campuses and at one point operated in high schools across the country. It has raised more than $40 million with investors including Owl Ventures and NEA.

    Since launching in 2021, Solomon said the company had adopted features like a peer-to-peer marketplace that’s listed more than 100,000 items, and a video element so people can write more than text posts.  

    Now, the company is looking to build a product called Global Fizz to expand the product beyond the U.S. Solomon spoke more about that on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, where he mapped out the future of the company.

    Solomon told the audience that the company is looking at ways to monetize, focusing on ads in particular. “We’ve already worked with companies like Perplexity,” he said. 

    “There are subscription models that have worked well with apps, but right now we’re focused on our ads business, and we’re focused on building a great product that keeps our users around and makes them happy.” 

    After all, he said, “The users are everything.”  

    Dominic-Madori Davis

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  • How to make your startup stand out in a crowded market, according to investors | TechCrunch

    At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors took the stage to dissect what makes — and breaks — a pitch deck. Jyoti Bansal, a founder-turned-investor; Medha Agarwal of Defy; and Jennifer Neundorfer of January Ventures shared with the crowd their candid views on what works in a pitch deck — and what doesn’t.

    Their biggest pet peeve? Buzzword overload.

    The more a founder says AI in the pitch, Agarwal said, the less AI the company likely uses. “The people who are doing things that are really innovative, they’ll talk about it, and it’s built in, but it’s not the core of their pitch,” she told the audience.  

    Bansal, who built and sold multiple companies before becoming an investor, distilled investor expectations into three core questions. First, he asks whether there is a large enough market to tackle. Does the founder’s idea have the potential to become a huge company? And is the problem he or she is solving actually worth solving?

    The second thing investors want to know is why this founder is the one who should be building the company. “There has to be something unique about you,” Bansal told the crowd, adding that this included having special members on the founding team or having special skills. “Why would you win? If the problem is interesting, there will be 20 other companies trying to solve it, so why would you win and what’s your opportunity?”  

    The third thing investors want to see, Bansal said, is some validation. “Traction with customers,” he said. “Validation could be initial customer feedback, revenue, something, but some kind of validation.”  

    These three questions, Bansal noted, all lead to the ultimate litmus test: Could this become a billion-dollar company?

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    The panel also addressed how AI startups can differentiate themselves as the space becomes saturated. Bansal emphasized the importance of domain expertise and a clear competitive strategy. Neundorfer said the companies that catch her attention are those enabling new behaviors rather than simply improving an existing process incrementally.  

    Agarwal offered more tactical advice to founders, saying they should explain how AI technology enables their product; articulate clear go-to-market strategies; and demonstrate how their business will be more efficient than incumbents.

    It’s also very important to be honest about what competitors are out there, she added. Some of you have “lost some credibility with me because you didn’t have it on your slide,” she told the founders in the audience. 

    Finally, the investors shared advice for navigating the rapidly evolving landscape. Agarwal urged founders to stay on top of industry developments. Neundorfer recommended staying connected to founder networks to share tools and insights.

    Bansal’s advice was simpler: “Focus on building your product.”

    Dominic-Madori Davis

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  • Investors share what to remember while raising a Series A | TechCrunch

    What does it take to raise Series A in today’s market? 

    The goalposts have moved, the stakes are higher, and investors seem pickier than ever as the AI boom reshapes the industry. At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors — Thomas Green of Insight Partners, Moxxie Ventures’ Katie Stanton, and GV’s Sangeen Zeb — broke down what they’ll be looking for in the new year.

    The numbers tell a clear story. Fewer rounds are getting funded but deal sizes have grown, said Green citing a study.   

    “It has never been easier to start a company, and it has never been harder to build something that is defensible,” Stanton said.  

    For Zeb, GV uses a specific formula to evaluate companies. The firm analyzes whether startups have achieved product-market fit, examining demand patterns to ensure every quarter outperforms the last. “That sequence should be happening consistently,” he said.  

    Stanton echoed this priority. “Can you prove that you can repeatedly sell? Can you prove that you can repeatedly grow in a big and growing market?”  

    But Green cautioned that not every company should pursue venture-scale growth. “It’s not worth even taking this money unless you think it can be a really big business, right?” he said. “Most companies should not [pursue] venture scale. They should not take hundreds of millions of dollars.”  

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    Beyond metrics, all three investors emphasized founder quality. Stanton said she is looking for passionate founders who can endure the long journey of building a company. Zeb agreed. “Passion is still the most important thing,” he said.  

    The panel inevitably turned to AI. Green assured non-AI companies: “Just because you’re not AI doesn’t mean you don’t have a very attractive asset, intrinsic quality to you,” he said.  

    For AI companies trying to differentiate in a crowded market, Green returns to first principles. “We try to understand, if it’s a market with a lot of competition — [including] both incumbents and next-gen competitors and platform players — what is going to be the standout path?”  

    Stanton said she looks founders who combine industry and technical expertise, while Zeb prioritizes relentless drive, seeking founders who are constantly asking how to move faster than the competition.

    Despite market fluctuations, the panel suggested that core investor priorities remain consistent. “The bar is high, but if the outcome can be impossibly huge, we’ll take that [bet],” Green said. 

    Dominic-Madori Davis

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  • What’s ahead for startups and VCs in 2026? Investors weigh in | TechCrunch

    Each year, we ask some top investors what they think the next year will bring. Last year, some investors thought the IPO market would be back up and running by now (which didn’t quite happen), while others thought the momentum behind AI was poised to accelerate (and they were right). This year, TechCrunch did the same thing, talking to five investors from various markets about what they are preparing for in 2026.  

    Here is what they said.  

    What will it take for a founder to raise next year, compared to last year?  

    James Norman, Managing Partner, Black Ops VC 

    Raising in 2025 requires a shift from “visionary” to “battle-tested.” In previous years, capital has been a primary moat; now investors are wary of “pilot purgatory,” where enterprises test AI solutions without an urgent need to buy. In 2026, the bar is rising. Founders must prove to VCs they have more than just traction; they need a distribution advantage. Investors are digging deeper into repeatable sales engines, proprietary workflow/processes, and deep subject matter expertise that holds up against the “capital arms race.” VCs no longer care about who’s first to market with a flashy demo. They want to know who’s building something that can last, earn trust, and scale long-term.

    Morgan Blumberg, Principal, M13 

    We believe the funding markets will always be available for the best founders, but the bar will rise. At the earliest stages, especially in AI application software, I do expect fewer mega seed rounds given intense competition and capital already deployed across many categories. Founders will need to stand out with unique distribution channels or perspectives, not just by relying on a large market opportunity and strong backgrounds. Capital moats have already formed around crowded sectors. At the Series A and B stages, top-quartile rounds will require clear evidence of explosive momentum. The market has now adjusted to these expectations with increased scrutiny on the sustainability of revenue.

    Allen Taylor, Managing Partner, Endeavor Catalyst  

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    Bigger, faster, better: bigger total addressable market, faster growth, better unit economics. We made 50 investments last year across 25 countries, and we expect to do more this year, so we’re seeing founders at very different stages and in very different markets. The strongest founders aren’t just showing what they’ve built so far — they’re helping investors understand where the business is going next. Real revenue and real customers still matter, but they’re not sufficient on their own. As an investor, I’m always asking: Where is this company today, and where could it realistically be in the next 12, 18, or 24 months? The founders who raise are the ones who can answer that question clearly and credibly.

    Dorothy Chang, Partner, Flybridge Capital

    A lot of founders are finding it easy to build new things because generative AI coding tools are so advanced today. But in truth, those tools are leveling the playing field for everyone, and competition is more fierce than ever. So founders building for venture scale need to make sure that they are (1) truly tackling a big idea, not just something that’s easy to vibe code; (2) building in a problem area that they are uniquely positioned to win; and (3) bringing something proprietary that can’t easily be replicated. This could be a contrarian approach with unique insights, proprietary access to data, deep networks/relationships, a technological advantage, etc. These aren’t new concepts, but the stakes and expectations are higher than ever.

    Shamillah Bankiya, Partner, Dawn Capital

    For founders selling to enterprises, I think the entire world has gotten smarter on the value that AI can deliver, and as such, proving — showing line of sight to ROI — will be more important than ever to investors. Founders who can prove that their products offer much higher value have the best shot at raising capital.

    What areas are you looking to invest in and why? 

    Norman

    As a fund, we remain industry-agnostic generalists, but we are always sharpening our lens. Today we’re looking for “high-context founders.” In a world where AI has commoditized the ability to write code, the winning edge is now lived experience. We want to invest in the founder who has spent years in the trenches of a complex industry and possesses the bespoke expertise that can be 10x’d by AI. For us, the ideal investment is a marriage of deep subject matter expertise and a “day zero” distribution advantage, meaning founders don’t just know what to build but already know exactly who is going to buy it.

    Blumberg  

    We are particularly interested in sleepy or legacy industries that sit outside core tech founder appetite, where AI can offer step-change ROI that drives adoption. These markets have lower competition and moats driven by complexity that often come with less obvious sectors. We also believe 2026 will be a great year for infrastructure supporting foundational model development, as well as frontier research categories like embodied AI and world models. Healthcare remains a major focus given clear signs of buyer demand; we focus on systems of record and platforms rather than point solutions.

    Taylor 

    Outside the United States! The best risk-adjusted venture returns are not in Silicon Valley anymore. They are in markets like Poland, Turkey, and Greece.

    When you invest across 25 countries in a single year, you stop thinking of venture as something that happens in one place and then spreads outward. Twenty years ago, roughly 90% of venture dollars went to the United States. That flipped in 2018. Today, more than half of venture investment — and more than half of the world’s unicorns — are outside the U.S.

    We see this every day. Founders in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are building venture-scale companies — often serving massive markets from the start. In our pipeline, it’s normal to see founders from Venezuela building in Iraq, or from Sudan building global businesses.

    Chang

    I’m most interested in founders who are tackling massive problems and leveraging technology for forward progress. I’m rather unmoved by the plethora of startups focused on agentically automating workflows for specific verticals. I’m much more interested in the larger platform shifts that will define this era of technological and societal progress.

    Bankiya

    We’ve seen tremendous impact on software from AI. I think the next frontier is at the intersection of software and hardware. Most of the world’s GDP is locked up in physical industries, and software-only solutions aren’t enough to fully unlock the world’s growth potential.

    Do you think the IPO market will thaw? Why or why not? 

    Norman 

    Yes, the IPO market is likely to thaw, not because conditions are suddenly ideal, but because the system is running out of viable alternatives. We’re approaching a tipping point where the private market’s ability to sustain multibillion-dollar valuations, often disconnected from profitability or liquidity, is wearing thin. Years of “paper markups” have postponed reality, but they haven’t eliminated it. Companies, boards, and late-stage investors increasingly need a mechanism to reset expectations, generate real liquidity, and re-establish price discovery. 

    Private credit has acted as a stopgap, extending runways without forcing valuation discipline. But that bridge is starting to look more like a pressure cooker. Debt can delay decisions, not solve structural capital needs, especially for companies built for equity-style growth. At some point, fresh capital becomes necessary, and public markets remain the only place capable of providing it at scale. Their growth narratives and strategic importance can provide the “air cover” needed to reopen the IPO window. Once investors re-engage around category-defining leaders, it creates permission for the broader high-growth software sector to follow.

    Blumberg 

    I think we will see a reopening of the IPO markets driven by the backlog of companies planning to list. Many large tech IPOs are anticipated, including darlings like Anthropic and OpenAI, and I believe one of these mega IPOs will drive considerable momentum for others. 

    Taylor 

    Yes — 2026 will be a big year for IPOs in New York as dozens of the top companies simply decide “it’s time.” It will also be a banner year for tech IPOs in places folks are not used to seeing them — like the stock market in Saudi Arabia. 

    I think people underestimate how global the thaw will be. We’ve had nearly four years of muted IPO activity, which has created a backlog of high-quality companies that are ready to be public. When the window opens, it won’t just be U.S. companies stepping through it. There’s already a cohort of major U.S.-listed technology companies from Latin America, including MercadoLibre and Nubank, and there’s another wave right behind them that public-market investors haven’t fully priced in yet. I don’t think all of those companies list in 2026, but several will. 

    What’s even more unexpected is what happens locally. You’re going to see meaningful technology IPOs in places like Saudi Arabia, listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul). When companies like Tabby [a buy now, pay later outfit] go public locally, it will challenge assumptions about where global tech outcomes happen. 

    Chang

    We’re looking to make slightly fewer, more concentrated bets. There is a ton of startup activity, so when we meet founders who really stand out, we want to be able to back up our high conviction with a higher check size and higher ownership percentage.

    Bankyia

    I think a hard catalyst would be required to reset the IPO markets — something akin to mega AI players facing unprecedented cost increases or sharp revenue declines. Think, for example, of energy prices sharply rising, such that it’s unaffordable to offer compute for AI training and inference.

    How are you looking at the venture market for next year as a fund manager? 

    Norman  

    We’re entering what I’d describe as a clearing event for the venture market, and next year will separate durable platforms from transient ones. The fallout will hit Fund I managers who haven’t found their footing, and active Fund II managers struggling with a [distributions-paid-in-capital, or DPI] drought from 2021 vintages. Traditional institutional anchors, particularly university endowments, are effectively in repair mode. After being squeezed by the absence of liquidity in 2021 and 2022, many are leaning on secondaries, pacing adjustments, and portfolio-smoothing strategies just to maintain existing commitments. 

    That means fewer new relationships and far less tolerance for emerging or undifferentiated managers. Stepping into their place are family offices that have moved from passive LP roles to active market forces. They aren’t just filling the “LP oxygen” left by retreating institutions; they are scoping direct mandates and using [registered investment advisors] to hunt for unique, high-conviction strategies.

    In 2026, there is no viable middle ground. You need to have a clinical, defensible track record and/or truly unfair access to differentiated deal flow. Lightly grounded generalist positioning, soft networks, and “good enough” performance won’t survive this cycle.

    Blumberg  

    We believe we are in the early innings of AI transformation, so we expect next year to be a strong vintage. Capital continues to concentrate in a select number of winners so we focus on being selective and operationally supporting our companies to earn our right to concentrate. We are advising our portfolio companies to strengthen their balance sheets in case of a downturn in 2026 while focusing on building for the long term rather than optimizing for fast funding.

    Taylor  

    Amazing time to back the boldest founders building for the next 10+ years! From a fund manager’s perspective, 2026 looks strong on both deployment and liquidity. Last year we had 12 liquidity events — all through M&A and secondaries. That matters because venture has grown dramatically over the last two decades, while paths to liquidity didn’t keep pace. What’s changing now is that venture is building a more complete liquidity toolkit — M&A, secondaries, and IPOs working together. 

    That’s critical when founders are committing 10, 15, even 20 years to building companies. At the same time, we’re seeing real structural shifts in core sectors. Financial technology, especially stablecoins, moved from experimentation to mainstream adoption in 2025, particularly in markets like Latin America and Africa. In those places, this isn’t speculative technology; it’s infrastructure. That combination is why 2026 looks like a strong year to be deploying capital.

    Bankyia

    We’re still searching for phenomenal European founders building groundbreaking companies. Great companies are formed in all cycles.

    What will happen to all the investor and startup interest in AI next year? 

    Norman  

    In 2026, the “AI curiosity” that fueled the last two years is being replaced by a demand for application and scale. We are moving from the era of building models to the era of building businesses. The fastest, most innovative companies aren’t the ones with the largest LLMs; they are the ones using AI to solve high-value, domain-specific problems that were previously too complex or too manual to scale. Investors aren’t looking for “AI startups” anymore; we’re looking for exceptional tech founders who have found a way to use this intelligence to 10x the efficiency of a massive, traditional market.

    Blumberg  

    We expect investor and startup interest to continue at all-time highs. However, I do think we will start to see tuck-in acquisitions, acquihires, and wind-downs in highly concentrated sectors such as coding automation, sales automation, marketing, and advertising as market share starts to concentrate in select assets.  

    Taylor  

    It will continue. But by the end of 2026, I predict AI will stop being a separate category, as it will just be a part of all new technology companies being built. 

    There’s a lot of breathless talk about AI right now — and that’s understandable. We’re still very early in understanding what this technology will actually change. In moments like this, excitement tends to run ahead of clarity. Some companies will be transformational, many won’t, and pricing will take time to adjust as real use cases emerge. The opportunity isn’t in labeling everything as “AI.” It’s in understanding where AI meaningfully changes cost structures, speed, or decision-making inside real businesses. That’s where durable value gets created.

    This is one of those moments when the fog is thick, and that’s when outcomes diverge the most. 

    Chang

    I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon. We’ve seen a lot of dollars go into infrastructure and theory; this year we’ll see a lot more of that investment more clearly turn into enterprise value at the application level.

    Bankyia

    AI will remain a hot topic, barring negative hard catalysts that dramatically change conditions, like an energy crisis or a rise in default rates.

    What is something unexpected that could happen in 2026 in the world of venture and startups? 

    Norman  

    One of the most unexpected shifts of 2026 will be the quiet end of the “ChatGPT-first” era in startups. Not because generative AI loses importance, but because no single model remains the default starting point. GPT is no longer consistently best-in-class for search, image generation, or video, which fundamentally changes how tech companies architect their products. The savvy founders in 2026 have already graduated to a multi-model world, and instead their focus has shifted to specialization. 

    For example, Anthropic has effectively captured the developer’s mindshare because Claude Code is better at building with you, and Google has finally activated its structural advantages. With Gemini 3, it’s pairing top-tier image and video generation with deep multimodal capability and native access to Google’s search and data ecosystem. That combination is proving hard to compete with. Model choice becomes an infrastructure decision, not a moat. The winners in 2026 won’t be the companies that “use GPT,” but the ones that orchestrate multiple models seamlessly, abstract complexity away from users, and build proprietary workflows on top.

    Blumberg  

    We expect to see many successful startups built with only one or two rounds of capital. AI tooling (especially coding automation) enables many early-stage companies to accomplish profitability without excessive burn. From a technology perspective, while LLMs are expected to be everywhere, companies will start to scale back usage in favor of more controlled use as enterprises prioritize explainability, cost, and reliability. This could drive heavier use of small models, deterministic and probabilistic hybrid models, world models, or simulation modeling.

    Taylor 

    The end of the Russia-Ukraine war will bring about a renaissance of investing in Ukrainian founders, who are some of the best in the world! Two additional things will genuinely surprise people. First, international companies — especially from Latin America — going public in New York at scale. Second, major technology IPOs coming out of the Middle East, listed locally. When companies like Tabby go public on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul), it will reset expectations about where global tech leadership lives.

    Dominic-Madori Davis

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  • 5 Side Hustles You Can Do Entirely on Social Media

    Social media, for many people, can be a way to stay in touch with friends, an ego exercise, or a vehicle to argue with strangers. But for some especially focused users, it can be a side hustle with income potential. Converting your feed into something that generates cash isn’t the easiest side hustle—and it takes time. But if you can build a large enough following, it can be a lucrative side business.There are a number of social media-focused side hustles. Here are a handful to consider.

    Social media is one of the most direct marketing paths for companies – and they’re regularly looking for exposure. Some companies will pay posters to feature or review their products. The amounts vary, depending on your follower count and the overall focus of your social media account. (If you tend to post about politics, for example, that could limit the products that want exposure on your feed.) Pay scales range from $50 to $500 per post for microinfluencers. Those with larger followings can demand a lot more. To find companies looking for sponsored posts, you can either reach out directly (usually to smaller brands) or join influencer marketplaces like AspireIQ or Collabstr.

    Influencer

    One of the nice things about social media is you can build a channel dedicated to something you’re passionate about—from toys to concerts to hobbies. If your content resonates with people, and you’ve built a good sized following, you’re likely to get on the radar of marketing professionals in that industry (or, again, could reach out yourself). You can also earn a percentage of ad revenues.

    Once you get to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours within a 12-month period, YouTube will let you join the Adsense program to earn a portion of the ad revenue on your videos. If TikTok is your outlet of choice, you’ll need at least 100K authentic video views in the last 30 days to be eligible to join the company’s Creator Fund. And Instagram offers monetization features like Badges and Subscriptions once you cross the 10,000-follower mark.

    Live Streaming

    Live streaming is especially popular in the video game world, and there are several ways to monetize that audience. Popular methods for doing so include TikTok gifts, YouTube SuperChats, or Twitch subs. If games aren’t your thing, consider using live streams to offer tutorials, host Q&As with notable people (or even yourself if you’ve gained enough followers) or focus on some sort of personality-driven project that captivates viewers.

    Digital Product Sales

    Just like QVC lets entrepreneurs show off and sell their products, social media can let side hustling creators show off their goods. Best of all, aside from the promotional work done on social media and the process of coming up with ideas, there’s not a lot of additional responsibilities you’ll need to shoulder.

    Using a dropshipping company, you can set up an online store and have a third-party supplier manufacture and ship the product to the customer, freeing you from having to worry about things like storage, fulfillment or upfront production costs. Your responsibility will be to come up with a concept that appeals to customers and convince them, via your feeds, to buy those goods. Set up a site on Shopify (Basic plans cost $29 per month) or some other service to start. 

    Prefer to keep your social media feed uncommercialized, but you’ve realized you have a talent for developing posts that turns heads? That’s a skill companies are always on the lookout for, and social media consultants are a side hustle that’s increasingly in-demand. You’ll need to be able to do more than capture attention. You’ll also need to monitor engagement metrics and increase interaction. But this is a job that’s more creative than materials-intense. Sites like Upwork and Freelancer.com are a good place to start looking for clients.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Chris Morris

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  • OpenAI’s Secretive A.I. Gadget Designed by Jony Ive Aims to Redefine Tech’s Vibe

    An A.I. device project spearheaded by Sam Altman and Jony Ive has earned the backing of Laurene Powell Jobs. Barbara Kinney/Emerson Collective

    Sam Altman and Jony Ive have stayed painstakingly cryptic about what their collaborative A.I. hardware device will ultimately look like. So far, the OpenAI CEO and former Apple designer have shared only that the product will be less clunky than a laptop and less screen-focused than a smartphone. Their latest hint, meanwhile, speaks to the product’s overall “vibe.”

    Current devices can feel like walking through Times Square, with all “the little indignities along the way: flashing lights in my face, tension going here, people bumping into me, noises going off,” Altman said at a recent event hosted by Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. OpenAI’s upcoming device, he added, will instead evoke the feeling of “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake in the mountains and just sort of enjoying the peace and calm.”

    Altman and Ive officially joined forces in May when OpenAI acquired the designer’s hardware startup, io, which previously received backing from Powell Jobs, in a $6.5 billion deal. The acquisition brought Ive into the fold to oversee OpenAI’s efforts to design a consumer-facing A.I. device that reimagines how people interact with technology.

    “What I went to with Sam wasn’t a product but a tentative thesis. It was a thought about the nature of objects and our interface,” Ive said at the same event, declining to offer more details about the pitch he delivered.

    What little the pair have disclosed about their project remains frustratingly vague. The initial design goal was to create something users “want to lick or take a bite out of,” Altman said, adding that an early prototype was scrapped in part because it didn’t fit that description.

    They appear to have since crossed that threshold. According to Altman, their work has now produced its first prototypes, which he described as “jaw-droppingly good.” The final product is expected to arrive in under two years, giving users plenty of time to, as he joked, lick and bite the device to their heart’s content.

    Altman and Ive have emphasized that their device will not be another smartphone and have repeatedly warned about the harmful effects of today’s dominant tech products. Nonetheless, from the clues they’ve offered, their approach seems to echo Apple’s sleek design language. OpenAI’s device will be “playful” and full of “whimsy,” Altman said, describing it as so minimal that consumers will look at it and say, “That’s it?”

    Ive, too, stressed restraint and simplicity. “I can’t bear products that are like a dog wagging its tail in your face, or products that are so proud that they solve the complicated problem and want to remind you of how hard it is,” said the designer. “I love solutions that teeter on appearing almost naive in their simplicity.”

    Even as they try to avoid the pitfalls of modern consumer tech—devices that can fuel unhealthy relationships—the duo are also working toward a release with societal impact on par with landmark products like the iPhone. When asked which device he uses most often, Altman pointed to the iPhone, calling it “the most ‘before-and-after-moment’ product of my life.”

    OpenAI’s Secretive A.I. Gadget Designed by Jony Ive Aims to Redefine Tech’s Vibe

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Jeff Bezos’ New AI Venture Quietly Acquired an Agentic Computing Startup

    After The New York Times story was published, Guss, Ozair, and about three dozen other people updated their LinkedIn profiles to list their affiliation with the Bezos venture. Several of those people also work at Foresite Labs.

    Details about Prometheus remain limited. Its founding date, formal name, and headquarters haven’t been publicly identified. But the dinner Bajaj hosted in June provided other clues.

    At least two other featured guests that night, including former Nvidia senior research scientist Kamyar Azizzadenesheli, quietly joined Prometheus early this year, their newly updated LinkedIn profiles show.

    Ashish Vaswani and Jakob Uszkoreit, two former Google researchers who coauthored a famous AI paper, ended up being unable to attend the dinner. But both are now founding advisers to Prometheus while running their own startups, according to LinkedIn data and a person familiar with the matter. None of the researchers responded to requests for comment.

    Built for Speed

    Ozair established General Agents last year, and the San Francisco startup released its first technology this past April. Described as “a real-time computer pilot,” Ace takes over a computer and carries out actions based on the user’s prompts. It’s part of a class of tools the AI industry calls computer agents, which can automate daily tasks on a laptop that span across different apps.

    One demo video from the launch shows Ace downloading an image from Google and sending it to someone over iMessage in under 15 seconds.

    How Ace fits into Prometheus’ plans is still murky. New versions of Ace continue to be released as recently as this month, according to public data from General Agents. The company’s website and job postings remain online, and the leader of a team in India helping train Ace also joined Prometheus, according to their LinkedIn profile

    Harsha Abegunasekara, cofounder and CEO of Donely, which makes a competitor to Ace, says he learned of the General Agents acquisition from an investor in Ozair’s startup. The deal has been a mixed bag for Donely. Some potential investors are pleased that a well-regarded rival may be off the board, while others are worried about going up against Bezos if Ace becomes a crucial part of what Prometheus develops.

    “There is something important there for Prometheus to get the entire company,” Abegunasekara says. “What General Agents really cracked early on is speed—Ace runs on your computer at light speed. We’ve been working on that for six months and haven’t achieved it yet.”

    Paresh Dave

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  • Shutdown Fallout at an Obscure Government Office Is Hurting the Spirits Industry at the Worst Time 

    Ben Zerbe founded Paquera Mezcal to give small producers in Mexico an opportunity to sell their products in the United States. Today, Los Angeles-based Paquera works with five family producers in Oaxaca, Mexico, and its mezcal is available in more than 1,400 bars, restaurants and shops nationwide.  

    But the business, which has grown each year since its launch in 2018, hit a speedbump this fall during the government shutdown, when an obscure office within the Treasury Department suspended operations and furloughed 398 of its 459 employees. The office, known as the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), is responsible for, among other things, enabling the bulk transfer of spirits within the U.S., approving the labels for new alcoholic beverages, and issuing permits for new distilleries and breweries. 

    “We need that office to be operating,” says Zerbe, who still has not been able to reach the office. “When no one’s there, we can’t do what’s called transfer bonds, meaning we can’t import bulk spirits and then transfer it to another licensed facility in the U.S. because no one in the office is there to approve it.” 

    TTB did not respond to Inc’s requests for comment, but according to its website, services have resumed. “While we are assessing the overall effect of the shutdown on our service levels going forward, we are working diligently to process applications and restore normal operations as quickly as possible,” the bureau said in a bulletin posted on Friday afternoon. It added that it would allow staff to work overtime to clear the backlog. 

    Ashley W. Brandt, an attorney at Tucker Ellis in Chicago who advises alcohol-industry clients, says he had six applications for wineries, distilleries, and breweries that were filed with the TTB prior to the government shutdown on October 1. In the past week, the agent in charge of one of the applications finally let him know the application was progressing.  

    “They’re doing the best they can with the staff they have,” says Brandt. “At the same time, I completely understand how hard this is going to be. I know there are plenty of new product innovations that got put on hold because of this.” 

    Even if the office quickly resumes its services, the spirits industry has faced more than a month of delays on crucial approvals in the run-up to the busy holiday season. “These lost weeks came at a pivotal time for the craft spirits industry, as the months of October, November, and December typically represent 30 to 40 percent of annual sales for many producers,” the American Craft Spirits Association wrote in a statement welcoming the end of the government shutdown. “New holiday releases, often key drivers of year-end revenue, were stalled in approval queues, delaying launches and straining small distilleries during their busiest season.” 

    Earlier this month, the founders of Song Dog Farm Distillery in Boyds, Maryland, told NBC News they were concerned they would not be able to roll out new cocktails and liqueurs for the holidays. Those beverages require TTB approval of both their labels and formulas. “It’s threatening to our business, and it’s disappointing to our customers,” David Harris, who owns the distillery with his wife, told the news outlet.  

    Zerbe of Paquera Mezcal estimates that he’ll experience about a 30 percent drop in short-term revenue. “It won’t tank our business,” he says. “But it hurts cashflow. It’s significant enough that it has caused some serious discomfort.” He adds that there’s not much small producers can do right now, besides comparing notes with each other and reaching out to customs brokers for the latest information. “The WhatsApp chats are going like crazy,” he says. “I literally talk to our customs broker almost every day.” 

    The delays at TTB come on top of an already challenging time for the alcohol industry. Alcohol consumption has dropped nationwide in recent years, causing ripple effects across the industry, as distributors, liquor stores, and bars and restaurants see their profits shrink. 

    New tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration have increased costs, shipping times, and uncertainty for importers. In March, after President Donald Trump threatened up to 200 percent tariffs on European spirits, the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance advised its members to halt all shipments to the U.S. And American whiskey brands faced consumer boycotts in Canada. 

    Zerbe says he’s been fortunate to not be affected by tariffs. Mezcal, which can only be produced in certain parts of Mexico, qualifies to be imported duty free under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement . He increased his imports at the start of the year because of the uncertainty over how tariffs might affect his business. But now, with that supply dwindling, Zerbe has mezcal sitting at distilleries in Mexico, awaiting the greenlight from TTB. 

    “For the spirits industry as a whole, this has been one of the hardest years, even more so than Covid,” says Zerbe. “It’s just so difficult to anticipate, calculate, and forecast what you need to grow and scale successfully.” 

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Jennifer Conrad

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  • Pentagon-backed RTP startup eyes Johnston County for rare-earth magnets plant

    A Pentagon-backed Research Triangle Park startup could announce as soon as Tuesday plans for a major manufacturing plant in Johnston County — a deal that, if consummated, could make North Carolina a U.S. hub for rare-earth magnets.

    RTP-based Vulcan Elements earlier this month announced a $1.4 billion deal with the federal government that would help the company meet its goal of producing up to 10,000 metric tons of Neodymium Iron Boron magnets over several years. The magnets are used in commercial products such as medical devices, electric vehicles, wind turbines, computer chips, and in defense applications such as fighter jets, nuclear submarines and satellites.

    People familiar with the effort told WRAL that the company has been considering an expansion that could create upwards of 1,000 jobs and an investment approaching $1 billion. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the negotiations. 

    There is no guarantee North Carolina will land the plant, the people said. Vulcan Chief Executive John Maslin told WRAL News this month that the company was engaged in a monthslong, multi-state hunt for expansion sites and that the company expected to make an announcement by the end of November. 

    A Vulcan spokesman on Monday declined to comment on the company’s plans. 

    The Johnston County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday morning is holding a special public hearing, where it could approve a proposed economic development agreement for an undisclosed manufacturer considering an expansion in Banner Township. The hearing would follow a meeting of the state Commerce Department’s Economic Investment Committee, which approves state incentives for companies with plans to expand in North Carolina. After the meetings, Gov. Josh Stein is scheduled to make an economic development announcement at an industrial property near the Johnston County town of Benson. 

    County economic development officials declined to identify the company or describe the project, which was described in a public hearing notice that also didn’t identify the company. David Rhoades, a spokesman for the state Department of Commerce, also declined to discuss the nature of the state’s meeting, adding that the state’s corporate recruiters frequently have discussions with companies about expansion plans. “We don’t comment on those discussions until the companies make a public announcement of their decision,” he said.

    Other people familiar with the negotiations told WRAL News that Vulcan would be the subject of those discussions and the announcement. 

    Economic development deals are often kept secret, protected from the state’s open records laws to enable state and local governments to negotiate with companies and to allow companies to explore options before finalizing major decisions. 

    It’s common for state and local officials to coordinate the timing of economic development meetings around corporate announcements. Officials often vote on incentives ahead of major economic development announcements, and often on the same day. Public meetings intended to discuss incentives are typically scheduled only after a company has committed to a location.

    Stein’s announcement is at the Crosspoint Logistics Center. The project identified in the county notice is proposing its expansion at Crosspoint,  which is south of the nexus of Interstate 95 and I-40. 

    The state’s performance-based incentives packages are often reserved for companies that plan to create lots of jobs that pay above the county average. Grants are typically paid out if the company meets annual hiring and investment targets. 

    The county is considering a proposal that includes economic incentives in the form of annual cash grants over a 15-year period — to be paid only after job-creation and investment targets have been met, according to the county notice. 

    “The county believes this project will help stimulate the local economy, result in new taxable capital investments in real and personal property increasing the tax base, and cause the creation by the company of a substantial number of new, permanent jobs,” the county’s hearing announcement said. 

    Federal funding boost

    The federal government’s interest in Vulcan is centered on its efforts to strengthen the nation’s domestic supply of rare-earth magnets.

    The U.S. Department of Commerce said Nov. 3 that it struck a preliminary agreement to receive a $50 million equity stake in Vulcan. The company’s expansion would be financed in part by a $620 million direct loan from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, $50 million of federal incentives from the Department of Commerce under the CHIPS and Science Act, and $550 million in private capital, the company said. Indiana-based ReElement Technologies would also expand its recycling and processing capabilities under the deal, with help from an $80 million direct loan from the Pentagon, matched by private capital.

    The planned federal incentives for Vulcan would fund equipment used for the domestic production of its magnets. ReElement Technologies processes end-of-life magnets, electronic waste, and mined concentrates into high-purity rare earth oxides.

    “We know that here in the United States, we need resilient, secure supply chains, both for national security, but also for economic resilience,” Maslin, the Vulcan CEO, told WRAL News in an interview after the deal was struck with the federal government. “If we want to win the AI race, these go in data centers, if we want to build out drones for agriculture, consumer delivery, if we want to lead the robotics revolution, if we want to build cars in this country, we need to make sure that we have capacity of critical components here in the US.

    Vulcan Elements’ magnets have already been delivered to customers in the defense and technology sectors. Vulcan and ReElement have worked together to help strengthen domestic supply of rare-earth magnets to build security around some of the nation’s most important sectors, executives said.

    “Our investment in Vulcan Elements will accelerate U.S. production of rare earth magnets for American manufacturers,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement after the federal financing deal was struck earlier this month. “We are laser-focused on bringing critical mineral and rare earth manufacturing back home, ensuring America’s supply chain is strong, secure and perfectly reliable.” 

    WRAL State Government Reporter Will Doran contributed to this report. 

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  • 6 Startups That Found Buyers in 2 Years or Less

    Setting a business up for a successful exit usually takes a while. Whether a company files for an initial public offering or receives a compelling buyout offer, it generally has to first spend several years building a solid customer base. But every now and then, startup founders cash out quickly.

    Selling a company isn’t everyone’s measure of success. Some founders aim for a different exit or launch a company with no intention of leaving it. Others might want to stay around, but investors push for an exit to see returns on their money.

    Still, a select group of entrepreneurs have been able to sell their startups for substantial payouts before those businesses hit their second birthday. That’s especially noteworthy as many founders don’t tend to stick around a business for the long term. A Harvard Business Review study from several years ago found that less than half of founder/CEOs continue to run the business after three years and fewer than 25 percent are in charge when a company goes public.

    Perhaps even more striking is the fact that most of the companies that have achieved this rare feat are still either around or have become a key part of their new parent company.

    Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim: YouTube

    Hurley, Chen, and Karim founded YouTube in February 2005 – on Valentine’s Day. Within nine months, the site had hosted a video that collected one million views. While it wasn’t the first video sharing site (Vimeo had been founded the year before), it quickly went viral – and the uploading of Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday” sketch sealed that. On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, a record-breaking amount at the time.

    Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger: Instagram

    Systrom was a Google employee when he built the forerunner to Instagram called Burbn. Krieger was an enthusiastic user of that app and the two eventually began working together to create what would become Instagram. The company was formally founded on Oct. 6, 2010. Meta (then Facebook) bought it for $1 billion on April 9, 2012.

    Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake: Flickr

    Founded in February 2004 by Butterfield and Fake, Flickr made its debut at the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference in San Diego. Originally engineered as part of a multiplayer online game, the site evolved and made photo sharing a common online activity. By the following March, Yahoo acquired the company for $35 million, helping it to scale its infrastructure to keep up with demand. Butterfield would go on to found office communication tool Slack.

    Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith: Hotmail

    Smith, who was an Apple employee, came up with an idea for anonymous web-based email, teaming up with a coworker Bhatia to launch Hotmail on July 4, 1996. Microsoft liked what it saw and made a $400 million offer the following December, incorporating it into the Windows live suite of products. The service was eventually incorporated into Outlook.com.

    Mark Pincus: Freeloader.com

    Freeloader was one of the first “push” software sites, offering free games to users, supplemented by advertising. Pincus founded the startup in 1995 and found a buyer just seven months later: Individual Inc., which paid $38 million for the company. Changes in the advertising market led to the company shutting down the site in 1997. Pincus stayed a part of the gaming, eventually launching Zynga in 2007, which he took public in 2011 (and which is now a part of Take-Two Interactive Software).

    Marc Lore: Jet

    Lore had some experience with exits when he founded this retail site. He had already sold his startup Diapers.com to Amazon for $545 million. But when he launched Jet.com in April 2014, something clicked. In 2016, Walmart bought Lore out, paying $3.3 billion for Jet in hopes of expanding its e-commerce arm. Four years later, it shut Jet.com down and phased out the brand, but CEO Doug McMillon said Jet had helped Walmart jump-start the progress it had made with its online retail business in that time. Lore continued to work with the retail giant through 2021.

    Chris Morris

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  • If You Want a Business That’s Built to Last, Start With Your ‘Why’

    Is it time for you to find a heroic mission? Do you want to create and lead a business worth fighting for—one that’s built to last? I’m for any entrepreneur, the answer is an emphatic yes! However, while it’s easy to write your business’s mission statement, finding one that will actually move the needle on performance takes some work. Here’s how to figure out the “why” behind your business and why that matters. 

    Start with your ‘why.’ 

    When you’re buried in the day-to-day of running a business, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. However, to build a remarkable business, you need to work backward. You need to find the unifying emotion that underpins everything you do. 

    Your “why” isn’t your product, your service, or your brand. It’s the higher purpose that gets you up at 5 a.m. when everyone else is still in bed. It’s the thing that will keep you going when the chips are down, when everyone else is ready to throw in the towel. 

    As the leader of your business, finding your “why” means having a direct line of sight to your reason for being. You wake up every day believing that the business you’re building is important and worthwhile. That belief guides how you think, how you act, how you move through the world. 

    Make yourself essential. 

    Here’s a simple test I would like you to consider: If you shut your doors tomorrow, then would anyone really miss you? The answer must be an unequivocal “yes.” 

    To build a business that people miss, you have to deliver something special. You have to offer them something unique, unlike what everyone else is offering. It has to be something that they literally cannot get anywhere else. 

    You don’t need to be different for the sake of being different. You need to be special and become a category of one. Your business must be so good at something and uncommon that your customers don’t just become buyers. Instead, they become raving fans. 

    Before every day begins, ask yourself, “Why do I do what I do?” Don’t just think it. Own it. Anchor yourself in it. Then, make everything else you do roll off that rock-solid foundation. 

    Beyond the job description 

    In a fast-moving world of exponentially increasing complexity, you need to focus on where people will want to work, where they will want to spend their money, and where they will want to put their energy. Your “why” is an answer to the question of what you do and why you do it. It’s powerful because it’s simple. 

    The most remarkable businesses are not necessarily the ones with the largest budgets or the most innovative marketing. The ones that really stand out are built by people who aren’t willing to compromise on their mission. That conviction becomes a magnet that attracts customers who don’t just buy from you—they believe in what you’re building. 

    In a sea of sameness, your “why” is your greatest competitive advantage. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Peter Economy

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  • Why This Southern City Is the Most Popular for Side Hustles

    Atlanta, over the past few years, has become a hotspot for startups, with a thriving entrepreneurial community thanks to a moderate cost of living, increased access to venture capital, and a strong tech community. It’s not just startups that are thriving in the city, though. The Big Peach, as locals call it, is also the top city in the country for side hustles, according to a new report.

    On an average month, there are 1,914 searches for side hustle-related terms coming from Atlanta, far more than any other city on the list. On average, there were 384 searches per 100,000 residents.

    The study, from direct-to-film transfer company Ninja Transfers, analyzed search volumes for side hustles in 170 U.S. major cities, focusing on 80 different types of side gigs.

    Atlanta’s monthly searches were nearly double the closest cities on the list, with podcasting, online tutoring, and freelance tutoring topping the list for that city. The Southeast, in general, was a hotspot for people seeking side hustles. Three of the top five cities were located in that region. Cities in the Rust Belt and Midwest also featured prominently.

    These were the top 10 cities for side hustles:

    1. Atlanta, Ga.
    2. Orlando, Fla.
    3. Salt Lake City, Utah
    4. St. Louis, Mo.
    5. Birmingham, Ala.
    6. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
    7. Minneapolis, Mn.
    8. Miami, Fla.
    9. Cleveland, Ohio
    10. Pittsburgh, Penn.

    Podcasting was the most popular side hustle among all of the searches among people looking for a side hustle. Online tutoring came second, followed by freelance writing, and mystery shopping.

    “Many Americans nowadays are looking to explore further than the standard 9-to-5,” said Victor Ilisco, director of sales and operations at Ninja Transfers in a statement. “[Side hustles] are becoming increasingly accessible thanks to digital platforms and tools. And the barrier for starting one is a lot smaller than what it used to be.”

    While most side hustles are ways for people to earn extra income, they can become fully-fledged business—sometimes growing into operations that rack up millions of dollars in sales.

    Atlanta, meanwhile, has become a launch pad for many startups in the software, fintech and healthcare fields. Among the companies that have gotten their start there are Mailchimp (which was acquired by Intuit in 2021), data privacy firm OneTrust, and cryptocurrency payment company BitPay.

    The heart of the city’s startup culture is the Atlanta Tech Village, which has helped launch over 300 startups, which have collectively raised more than $3.2 billion in capital. That incubator offers entrepreneurs a place where they can interact with other founders and collaboratively solve problems, access to mentors and office and event space to build and showcase their companies.

    This year, Atlanta was home to 213 of the fastest growing companies on the Inc. 5000 list. And a WalletHub list of the “Best & Worst Places to Start a Career for 2025” ranked Atlanta first.

    The qualities that make the city ideal for startups can also be beneficial for people pursuing side hustles. The entrepreneurial energy that encourages startups also benefits freelance ventures and side hustles that approach an unmet need from a different angle. And if your side hustle begins to grow into something more than extra income, there are plenty of resources to help you take it to the next level. 

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Chris Morris

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  • How Twelve Labs Teaches A.I. to ‘See’ and Transform Video Understanding: Interview

    Soyoung Lee, co-founder and head of GTM at Twelve Labs, pictured at Web Summit Vancouver 2025. Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images

    Sure, the score of a football game is important. But sporting events can also foster cultural moments that slip under the radar—such as Travis Kelce signing a heart to Taylor Swift in the stands. While such footage could be social-media gold, it’s easily missed by traditional content tagging systems. That’s where Twelve Labs comes in.

    “Every sports team or sports league has decades of footage that they’ve captured in-game, around the stadium, about players,” Soyoung Lee, co-founder and head of GTM at Twelve Labs, told Observer. However, these archives are often underutilized due to inconsistent and outdated content management. “To date, most of the processes for tagging content have been manual.”

    Twelve Labs, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in video-understanding A.I., wants to unlock the value of video content by offering models that can search vast archives, generate text summaries and create short-form clips from long-form footage. Its work extends far beyond sports, touching industries from entertainment and advertising to security.

    “Large language models can read and write really well,” said Lee. “But we want to move on to create a world in which A.I. can also see.”

    Is Twelve Labs related to Eleven Labs?

    Founded in 2021, Twelve Labs isn’t to be confused with ElevenLabs, an A.I. startup that specializes in audio. “We started a year earlier,” Lee joked, adding that Twelve Labs—which named itself after the initial size of its founding team—often partners with ElevenLabs for hackathons, including one dubbed “23Labs.”

    The startup’s ambitious vision has drawn interest from deep-pocketed backers. It has raised more than $100 million from investors such as Nvidia, Intel, and Firstman Studio, the studio of Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. Its advisory bench is equally star-studded, featuring Fei-Fei Li, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Alexandr Wang.

    Twelve Labs counts thousands of developers and hundreds of enterprise customers. Demand is highest in entertainment and media, spanning Hollywood studios, sports leagues, social media influencers and advertising firms that rely on Twelve Labs tools to automate clip generation, assist with scene selection or enable contextual ad placements.

    Government agencies also use the startup’s technology for video search and event retrieval. Beyond its work with the U.S. and other nations, Lee said that Twelve Labs has a deployment in South Korea’s Sejong City to help CCTV operators monitor thousands of camera feeds and locate specific incidents. To reduce security risks, the company has removed capabilities for facial and biometric recognition, she added.

    Will video-native A.I. come for human jobs?

    Many of the industries Twelve Labs serves are already debating whether A.I. threatens humans jobs—a concern Lee argues is only partly warranted. “I don’t know if jobs will be lost, per se, but jobs will have to transition,” she said, comparing the shift to how tools like Photoshop reshaped creative roles.

    If anything, Lee believes systems like Twelve Labs’ will democratize creative work traditionally limited to companies with big budgets. “You are now able to do things with less, which means you have more stories that can be created from independent creatives who do not have that same capital,” she said. “It actually allows for the scaling of content creation and personalizing distribution.”

    Twelve Labs is not the only A.I. player eyeing video, but the company insists it serves a different need than its much larger competitors. “We’re excited that video is now starting to get more attention, but the way we’re seeing it is a lot of innovation in large language models, a lot of innovation in video generation models and image generation models like Sora—but not in video understanding,” said Lee, referencing OpenAI’s text-to-video A.I. model and app.

    For now, Twelve Labs offers video search, video analysis and video-to-text capabilities. The company plans to expand into agentic platforms that can not only understand video but also build narratives from it. Such models could be useful beyond creative fields, Lee said, pointing to examples like retailers identifying peak foot-traffic hours or security clients mapping the sequence of events surrounding an accident.

    While A.I. might help a Hollywood director assemble a movie, Lee believes it won’t ever be the director. Even if the technology can provide narrative options, humans still decide which story is most compelling, identify gaps and supply the footage. “At the end of the day, I think there’s nothing that can replace human creative intent.”

    How Twelve Labs Teaches A.I. to ‘See’ and Transform Video Understanding: Interview

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • 6 Startups That Reveal the Secret to Attracting Gen Z Customers

    Winning the hearts and loyalty of Generation Z is an uphill battle. As the first digital native generation, these young people have grown up with an endless stream of apps—shopping, working, learning, dating and making friends online. Gen Z has made TikTok a dominant force in social media and are passionate about their interests, from K-pop to climate change.

    Plenty of startups have tried to woo this demographic group, and many have failed. But a few select startups have found success in recent years by targeting areas that are of particular interest to Gen Z. Here’s a look at how some entrepreneurial companies have been successful in attracting Gen Z.

    Margins

    Founded late last year, Margins is a San Francisco-based company that is riding the BookTok wave. That substantial TikTok community lets Gen Z recommend, review and discuss books—and it’s driving sales for authors. Margins founders Paul Warren and Nick Punt saw quick success with their app, which helps BookTokers track what they’ve read and discover new books, adding a social element to a sometimes-solitary activity. Installs went from 400 to 60,000 in just 12 days. That number crossed 100,000 in April of this year.

    Doji

    Individual style is important to Gen Z, but putting a look together can be complicated. Founded in 2024 by Dorian Dargan and Jim Winkens, this NYC-based company blends fashion and tech, letting users create an avatar of themselves to virtually try on designer clothes. That lets younger users have access to styles they might not otherwise be able to test—and lets them experiment with different looks without fear of embarrassment. In May, Doji raised $14 million in seed money to expand the app and improve its AI models.

    Elin.ai

    Research by the Walton Family Foundation found that 42 percent of Gen Z struggles with depression and feelings of hopelessness. That’s part of the reason this generation has pushed to bring mental health to the foreground of the national healthcare conversation. Czech-based Elin.ai, founded in 2023 by Jan Romportl, Petr Stanislav, and Jiri Horacek, taps into that interest, using artificial intelligence to analyze screenshots and offer personalized advice to help users, helping them manage stress, anxiety and cyberbullying, among other challenges.

    Swsh

    Gen Z has been documenting its life in photos and videos for nearly two decades, so it’s no surprise, really, that photo-focused apps and companies resonate with those users. Swsh, founded in 2022 by Weilyn Chong, Nathan Ahn, and Alexandra Debow, is a New York-based photo sharing and social platform that is tailored to Gen Z interests. Users can filter out items from photos and use the app’s AI-driven facial recognition tool to search for photos of themselves. The company recently began offering the ability to password protect albums, so users can control who sees the shots.

    Corner

    Gen Z is a big proponent of shopping local, but they demand those stores have online shopping tools. (A 2023 survey found 73 percent of Gen-Zers and 75 percent of Millennials say they would be more inclined to browse and buy more often from small businesses that provide wider payment and delivery choices.)  Corner, founded in 2022 by Eliza Wu and Jake Xia, helps them do that with a layer of social media on top. It’s a mapping application, where the point is to discover and explore local businesses based on social recommendations. Rather than scraping other sites, the app has built its map from the ground up—and in three years, its users have added more than 275,000 locations. There are no star ratings, and while there are the expected restaurants and retailers, you’ll also occasionally find a listing for a spot to watch the sunset. The app has over 55,000 users across 450 cities.

    Beli

    A social network for foodies, New York City-based Beli was founded in 2021 by Judy Thelen and Eliot Frost. Users rank restaurants and other food-focused places, marking their favorite dishes. The app offers a score for how the app’s users liked the restaurant as well as one for how the individual user’s friends on the app liked it. Profiles can be public or private and the app has evolved into a dating app of sorts, connecting people with similar food interests. Gen Z has enthusiastically embraced it (roughly 80 percent of the app’s users are under 35), thanks to the social elements and the chance to express themselves. Beli now boasts over 60 million reviews globally, topping Yelp.

    Chris Morris

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  • How This Corn-Free Popcorn Startup Landed Novak Djokovic as an Anchor Investor

    Can you have popcorn without corn? Serial entrepreneur Jess Davidoff and tennis star Novak Djokovic certainly think so. At the Hellenic Championship tennis tournament in Athens, Greece, on Saturday, the pair officially launched Cob, a sorghum-based “popcorn” brand. 

    In addition to leading a $5 million seed round, 24-time Grand Slam Champion Djokovic is coming on board as a co-founder. “I prioritize companies that have products that my family and I actually use and consume,” says Djokovic, who has also invested in a handful of wellness and sports-related startups. “I can not only add value but act as a sounding board for future product innovations.” 

    Like many businesses, Cob sprang from a personal need. Soon after Davidoff’s first son started eating solid food, he began to have severe, unexplained health issues. With doctors unable to pinpoint a cause, she started eliminating foods from his diet to see if a food allergy might be the cause. Eventually, she zeroed in on corn as the potential culprit, and an allergist confirmed the diagnosis.  

    Finding a Corn Alternative

    Corn allergies are relatively rare, but they’re also extremely challenging to work around, since corn is used to make common food additives like corn syrup, riboflavin, and citric acid. “I essentially couldn’t feed him anything that was packaged or from a restaurant, so I started making everything myself,” says Davidoff. “One of the foods that I particularly missed was popcorn.” 

    She went to New York specialty grocer Kalustyan’s and bought a bunch of grains to see what might pop well. “Most of them tasted like a bad rice cake,” she says. “I stumbled upon sorghum, which happened to pop just like popcorn, and we started to make it all the time.”  

    Davidoff was impressed by the nutritional and environmental profile of sorghum, a drought-resistant grain often found in dishes in parts of Africa and Asia. In the U.S., most of it is grown in the so-called Sorghum Belt that stretches from South Dakota to Texas, and it’s primarily used for ethanol and animal feed. But because its nutrient dense and gluten free (like corn), it’s beginning to appear in American health food aisles and baby foods: Little Spoon and Jennifer Garner’s baby food brand Once Upon a Farm both use sorghum in their puffed baby snacks.  

    Davidoff’s friends liked the popped sorghum as well, and by the time her second son was also diagnosed with a corn allergy, she believed there might be a market for corn-free snacks.  

    Early in her career, Davidoff founded and sold several education and tech firms before settling into a career as a turnaround CEO for celebrity and consumer brands. “I absolutely loved what I did,” says Davidoff. “I honestly thought I would do that for the rest of my career, but I stumbled upon sorghum and decided to jump back in the founder seat.” 

    She picked the name Cob because “the cob is what’s left once we take all the corn away,” she says, and began selling bags at farmers’ markets and specialty stores in the Hamptons last summer. Most people had never heard of sorghum, but they liked what they tasted. In fact, Cob sold out of its initial inventory in just six weeks. 

    Courting a Tennis Legend

    Davidoff had a hit on her hands, but she needed a business partner who could help her get the word out. On a run, Novak Djokovic’s name popped into her head. “I was drenched in sweat. I came into my husband’s office, and I’m like, I’m going to get Novak Djokovic,” she remembers. “He’s the perfect co-founder for this because he talks extensively about his plant-based diet and why ancient grains are so good for you.” 

    She didn’t know him, but a professional tennis player whose brand she’d worked for in the past was able to relay a message to Djokovic’s team, and they arranged a call. “He loved the idea,” Davidoff says. But Djokovic wanted to be sure the product held up to scrutiny. “I met with his nutrition team, who vetted everything,” says Davidoff. “They had such extensive questions to the point where I had to chat with an agronomist to fully understand how sorghum absorbs heavy metals from soil.” 

    After that, she flew to Europe with samples for Djokovic and his family to try. Djokovic was impressed by Davidoff’s background and personal connection to the brand. He agreed to come on as a co-founder, offering input on product development and marketing—and not to mention his star power and 16 million Instagram followers. 

    Finding the Right Flavor

    While Djokovic is known for his meticulous eating habits and sticking to a gluten-free, largely plant-based diet, the co-founders knew they needed to make something that would be both healthy and commercially viable. “It’s been fun to do that tango between what is in Novak’s fridge versus what’s going to work when we want to [get into] Target,” Davidoff says. 

    If the company had stuck with Novak’s strict diet, it probably would only have been able to offer its Mediterranean Herb and Olive Oil & Pink Salt flavors. “No dairy, and nothing sweet,” she says. But Cob also offers a Seriously Cheesy flavor topped with organic Parmesan that’s already a hit with kid testers. (For his part, Djokovic says Olive Oil & Pink Salt is his favorite flavor.) 

    Cob is available for online preorders starting November 1, and Davidoff hopes to be in retail stores by late 2026. With time, Cob plans to roll out other snacks and pantry staples with sorghum as the hero ingredient.  

    So far, Cob’s founders are mum about what the next product will be, but Djokovic offered a hint: “It might make an amazing side dish for your holiday meals!” 

    Jennifer Conrad

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  • Donald Trump’s Truth Social Is Launching a Polymarket Competitor

    “If you had to point to one reason [crypto prediction markets] are able to come back to the US, you have to point to the Trump administration,” says Zach Hamilton, founder of crypto startup Sarcophagus, in an interview with WIRED. “Donald Trump. I mean, that’s it.”

    Even before the arrival of Truth Predict, the Trump family had a financial interest in the spread of prediction markets in the US.

    In January, Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi as a strategic adviser. Then, in August, Polymarket received an investment from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Trump Jr. serves as a partner. As part of the deal, Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board.

    The ties between the Trump family and Polymarket, forged just as Polymarket was seeking reentry into the US, have drawn scrutiny from critics who claim the investment could amount to a conflict of interest. The deal creates an opportunity, they allege, for the Trump family to profit from changes in policy instigated by the Trump administration.

    “No one is saying members of the president’s family cannot engage in normal capitalist activities in a capitalist country,” says Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, an organization that seeks to scrutinize the behavior of elected officials. “But Polymarket is the subject of heated political controversy. As such, the investment reflects a significant conflict of interest—and an avoidable one.”

    “Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” says White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement to WIRED.

    Polymarket, TMTG and 1789 Capital did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

    The Truth Predict launch also tees up a scenario in which separate facets of the Trump family’s business empire could effectively compete against one another.

    “From a venture capital perspective, many of us don’t like to invest in competing projects. We try to avoid that,” says Chris Perkins, managing partner at crypto VC firm CoinFund. “We try to identify category winners.”

    Already, businesses connected to the Trump family are operating competing bitcoin treasuries. In June, a dispute broke out over which corporate entities were permitted to launch an “official” Trump-branded crypto wallet.

    Joel Khalili

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