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Gridcare wants to save the power grid: What’s the biggest holdup in data center construction today? Microsoft reckons it’s securing buildings with sufficient power, not sourcing scarce GPUs. Enter Gridcare, which aggregates a wealth of data on the state of the domestic electricity grid to “help data center developers find available power for their facilities.” Given how much faster it is to find spare power than to spin up new interconnection hardware, it’s not a shock that Gridware just raised a $64 million round just one year after leaving stealth.
OpenAI shakes up its product team: Greg Brockman will now handle both the company’s AI infrastructure and its product teams, which are being consolidated into a single org. Now, one group at the AI model maker will manage ChatGPT, Codex, and its developer-facing APIs. OpenAI faces stiff competition from Anthropic, Google, and other AI providers for market share, making the unification of its business and consumer products into a single team an interesting approach to the market. (Repeat after me: SuperApp)
SpaceXAI takes on Claude Code, Codex: Released into what SpaceXAI calls an ‘early beta,’ the AI lab’s new Grok Build service brings Claude Code-style tooling to the company previously known as xAI. The move by the Elon Musk-founded AI company comes after demand for agentic coding services exploded in recent quarters, thanks to improvements in both model intelligence and harness design. Grok Build is limited at present to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, the highest tier of Grok access.

TWiST 500

OpenAI (TWiST500) is working with Plaid (TWiST500) to bring artificial intelligence to personal finance. Consumers are already familiar with ChatGPT, and Plaid is the internet’s de facto fintech connective tissue, making the pair are natural allies in bringing AI to consumer financial health.

Plaid was last valued at around $8 billion, or about 1% of OpenAI’s current valuation.

TechCrunch reminds us that OpenAI bought personal finance startup Hiro earlier this year. Clearly, the AI lab has an eye on deepening its presence in the consumer finance space.

OpenAI claims that “more than 200 million people come to ChatGPT every month for budgeting, questions about their investments,” so the demand is already there. Sam Altman and company are merely building better tools for expressed demand.

Can everyone access it? Nope. The service is restricted to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, potentially giving the lab another lever to get free users of its chat service to sign up for a paid account.

People are already accustomed to paying for financial tools. Therefore, the upgrade rate for free users who want access to the new finance features could be steep.

OpenAI doesn’t want to build the technology needed to connect to every financial technology company in the world. Partnering with Plaid is, therefore, a shortcut for the upcoming IPO and a coup for Plaid itself. What I want to know is what the chances of OpenAI buying Plaid are today, and if that figure grows over time.

On one hand, perhaps agents in the future will dissolve our need for services like Plaid. On the other, if you want to add services to your AI tool, bringing startups in-house that can facilitate vertical-expansion is good sense. What do you think? — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2288: Anthropic just declared every unauthorized secondary sale of its stock "void" — naming Hiive, Forge, Sydecar, Upmarket, and others in a public hit list. Jason and Alex sit down with Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures), Dave McClure (Practical VC), and Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures) to unpack what the AI lab’s move to limit secondary trades means for SPV operators, brokers, and the founders trying to keep control of their cap tables. Plus: a real story of a founder who returned a $15M Series A six months after closing because Claude was going to eat his startup, SaaS moats, and just what does it mean to be rich?

E2287: Cerebras just jacked its IPO range to $150–$160 a share, OpenAI bought a consulting firm to seed its $4 billion private-equity joint venture, and a startup in Oakland is electrolyzing magnesium out of seawater for one-third the going price. Alex Wilhelm and Jason Calacanis go deep with AI21 co-CEO Ori Goshen on why model orchestration, not bigger LLMs, will decide who wins enterprise AI. The crew also covered the decline of OpenClaw, TikTok's new £3.99 ad-free tier, more entries in the live-show sidebar bounty, and had time for a little Off Duty before signing off.

E2286: Banks don’t want to hand over their data to AI labs. So David Moscatelli built a $250,000 box that runs AI on-prem. He already has 1,600 pre-orders. On today’s episode of TWiST, Jason and Alex sit down with the Go Abacus founder and Yanez's Jose Caldera to unpack how regulated industries are getting AI without the cloud, why Bittensor subnet 54 is incentivizing miners to attack identity systems, and why Cloudflare just laid off 20% of its workforce in the same week it raised guidance. The show closes with Jason explaining what it means to build an AI-first startup, and how workers can derisk their future employment!

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