POV: VCs are rushing to secure a stake in Anthropic ahead of its IPO

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🔐 WD-40 keeps its formula locked behind extreme secrecy

🖱 The formula for WD-40 is guarded through a tightly controlled internal system. The current CEO was allowed to see it only after more than 30 years at the company.

🖱 WD-40 CEO Steve Brass gained access in 2024 together with the CFO. They viewed the handwritten formula during a bank visit after advance notice, multiple NDAs, and with a key held by the company’s chief lawyer. The document is stored in a Bank of America vault in San Diego.

🖱 Only one original copy exists. Most employees work with encoded versions and never see the real formula, including senior R&D staff.

For WD-40, secrecy itself remains part of the product’s long-term moat.

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How to activate the Superconscious mind

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🎮 Game stocks slide after Google shows Project Genie

🖱 Shares across the gaming industry fell after Google unveiled Project Genie, an AI system that generates interactive digital worlds from simple text prompts.

🖱 The announcement raised concerns about new competition and pressure on traditional game development workflows.

🖱 In Japan, stocks of Nintendo dropped within a 1.3–7% range. Capcom and Konami moved lower in the same session.

🖱 In Hong Kong, Chinese developers also declined. Tencent and NetEase fell by about 2–4%.

The move followed similar weakness earlier in US-listed gaming platform stocks.

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🏎 Williams F1 names Claude its official “Thinking Partner”

🖱 Williams Racing signed a multi-year partnership with Anthropic and Atlassian. Claude becomes the team’s official “Thinking Partner.”

🖱 Williams says it will use Claude as a decision support assistant for reasoning and analysis across the team.

🖱 Use cases include helping engineers interpret telemetry plus technical docs, supporting race scenario work plus post-race analysis, and speeding up internal knowledge workflows from R&D to management.

A notable detail: the focus is on explainable reasoning, with Claude expected to show how it reached an answer, not only the output.

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🚀 SpaceX buys xAI to push AI computing into orbit

🖱 SpaceX acquired xAI in a share swap.
The combined company is valued at $1.25T. xAI owns X and develops AI systems.

🖱 Elon Musk says AI progress is limited by Earth-based data centers. They need large amounts of power and cooling. Global electricity supply cannot scale without social and environmental costs.

🖱 The proposed solution is orbital computing. Musk plans a constellation of up to 1M satellites acting as space-based data centers powered by solar energy. In 2025, SpaceX already put about 3,000 tons into orbit, mostly Starlink satellites, using Falcon rockets.

🖱 Starship is the next step. Musk describes launches every hour with payloads of about 200 tons, enabling millions of tons per year in orbit. This capacity is positioned as the backbone for larger satellites, space manufacturing, and future off-Earth operations.

The merger ties AI scale directly to launch capacity.

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🍎 Apple buys Q.ai for $2B

🖱 Apple acquired Israeli startup Q.ai for $2B. It is Apple’s second largest acquisition after Beats. All 100 employees will join Apple.

🖱 Q.ai develops AI that reads speech from facial movement. The team previously worked on core technologies behind Xbox Kinect and Face ID.

🖱 The deal brings in a full team with deep experience in vision-based interaction. That capability fits Apple’s long-term push into hardware where cameras and sensors play a central role.

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🥷 Forbes 30 Under 30 founder charged with fraud in Kalder case

🖱 US prosecutors charged Gokce Guven, founder of fintech startup Kalder and a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, with investor fraud and visa fraud.

🖱 She allegedly misled investors and US authorities. Arrest took place in November 2025.

🖱 Kalder raised $7M in seed funding in 2024 at a $35M valuation and claimed strong brand adoption and growing revenue.

🖱 Prosecutors say some brand deals were only pilots or never existed. The company allegedly kept two sets of books, with inflated numbers shown to investors and even reflected on Forbes.

🖱 The same false data was reportedly used to obtain an O-1 visa, including recommendation letters Guven allegedly signed herself.

If convicted, she faces up to 20 years for investor fraud, plus additional sentences for visa fraud and identity misuse.

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Facebook launched this day in 2004.

Sales then: $382,000 in a year.

Sales now: $382,000 in 50 seconds.

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🧭 Y Combinator lists what it wants to fund in spring 2026

Y Combinator updated its Requests for Startups for the spring 2026 batch. The list highlights areas where YC actively wants new companies.

🖱 Cursor for Product Managers
AI tools that turn user interviews and product data into clear product decisions and feature plans.

🖱 AI-Native Hedge Funds
Funds built around AI agents that research filings, synthesize signals, and execute trades from the ground up.

🖱 AI-Native Agencies
Design, marketing, or legal agencies rebuilt as software-first businesses with scalable margins.

🖱 Stablecoin Financial Services
Payments, investing, and cross-border money movement built on stablecoins while regulation is still open.

🖱 AI for Government
Tools that help governments handle growing workloads with lower cost and faster execution.

🖱 Modern Metal Mills
Automation and energy optimization for outdated steel and metal manufacturing systems.

🖱 AI Guidance for Physical Work
Real-time AI assistance for workers using cameras and step-by-step instructions on the job.

🖱 Large Spatial Models
AI systems that can reason about 2D and 3D space and physical manipulation.

🖱 Infra for Government Fraud Hunters
Platforms that organize whistleblower data, messy documents, and complex corporate structures.

🖱 Make LLMs Easy to Train
Better tooling for large datasets and end-to-end LLM training workflows.

The list signals where YC expects new categories to emerge next.

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💪 GitLab co-founder turns cancer treatment into a founder-mode operation

Sid Sijbrandij became a billionaire after GitLab went public in fall 2021. A year later, in 2022, he was diagnosed with a spinal tumor. Surgery and chemotherapy led to remission. In 2024, the cancer returned and standard treatment paths were exhausted.

Sijbrandij stepped away from GitLab and switched to what Paul Graham calls founder mode. He built a dedicated team around his own treatment, including an external CEO, computational biology experts, and a scientific advisory board.

🖱 Built a personal medical knowledge base exceeding 1,000 pages
🖱 Tested experimental drugs, including therapies developed for other cancers
🖱 Solved bottlenecks in tissue sampling and cryopreservation
🖱 Supported biotech companies developing drugs relevant to his case

The work expanded treatment options from almost none to dozens. After therapy, the tumor shrank enough for surgery. Cancer is currently not detectable, and the team continues working to prevent relapse.

Startup execution, applied to staying alive.

Full article

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🧠 Meta says its Avocado model is its most advanced pretraining yet

🖱 Meta internally described a new model codenamed Avocado as the company’s most advanced pretrained model so far.

🖱 The claim appears in an internal memo seen by The Information and written by Megan Foo from Meta Superintelligence Labs.

🖱 According to the memo, Avocado outperformed leading open models in internal benchmarks.

🖱 Despite having no post-training, it is already competitive with top fine-tuned systems.

The comparison focus on open models suggests pretraining is largely complete. Meta previously signaled it may move away from open weights, which makes Avocado’s positioning notable.

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🗂 Microsoft builds a data marketplace for AI training

🖱 Microsoft is creating a marketplace where rights holders can price their content for AI training.

🖱 AI companies would license data legally instead of scraping it.

🖱 Partners include Vox Media, The Associated Press, and Condé Nast. Smaller independent publishers are also expected to participate.

A pilot launch is planned soon. The model turns training data into a priced input rather than a legal gray zone.

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🔽 Anthropic rattles software and finance stocks

Markets reacted sharply after reports around new Anthropic tooling, with a broad selloff across software, finance, and asset management names.

Bloomberg data showed heavy pressure across the sector:
🖱 Around $285B wiped out across affected stocks
🖱 Goldman’s software basket down about 6%, the largest drop since April
🖱 Financial services index down roughly 7%
🖱 Nasdaq at one point down 2.4%

The trigger was not a new model, but the release of 11 plugins for Claude Cowork on Jan 30. These tools target full workflows like financial modeling, legal research, and sales operations, rather than plugging into existing software.

Stocks tied to those workflows sold off hard:
🖱 RELX: -14%
🖱 Wolters Kluwer: -13%
🖱 Infosys: -7%
🖱 TCS: -6%

Wall Street has started calling it a “SaaSpocalypse.” The concern is that foundation model companies are moving beyond APIs and into owning the application layer itself.

For markets built on selling automation, this is no longer theoretical.

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🚀 19-year-old founder from Tajikistan gets into Y Combinator with a solo startup

🖱 Y Combinator accepted Wayco into its Winter 2026 batch. The founder is 19-year-old Iqbol Temirkhojaev from Tajikistan. He is building an AI assistant for law firms that handles client intake around the clock.

🖱 Wayco raised $1.5M in a single week. Investor demand reached $3.5M. Backers include Inovo, the Sequoia Scout Fund, the founder of Kayak, and early investors from ElevenLabs and Groq.

🖱 Temirkhojaev has been building early. He started competitive programming at 11, launched his first startup at 13, sold it at 14, and received a state medal at 16.

A rare YC solo founder story, coming from far outside the usual startup hubs.

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🥷 Forbes details Masha Drokova’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein

🖱 American Forbes profiled Masha Drokova (now Bucher), calling her one of the best-known female investors in Silicon Valley. Her fund Day One Ventures reportedly manages $450M with 22 unicorns, including xAI and World Orb.

🖱 The same story focuses on her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after his emails became public. In 2017, she began working as his publicist, helping with reputation work. The correspondence later turned personal.

🖱 Emails describe Prada gifts, luxury salon visits in New York, stays at Four Seasons, long calls, Skype exchanges, and Epstein requesting nude photos. In 2019 she wrote that she “would never have created her fund” without his ideas and knowledge.

🖱 Forbes says there is no clear proof Epstein funded Day One, but she did ask him to introduce her to “the right Russian oligarchs” while she was looking for investors.

🖱 The emails also suggest she introduced entrepreneurs to Epstein, with names including Sergey Belousov. One founder said she presented Epstein as a wealthy philanthropist while refusing to reveal his identity until the meeting happened.

Her last email to Epstein was sent 11 days before his 2019 arrest.

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