Snap's back with new Specs

Top News

Snap’s next Spectacle: Snap announced its next stab at consumer-facing AR smart glasses during the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Long Beach, California this week. Yes, you probably recall the company’s prior 2016 experiment with wearables, which despite a clever, attention-grabbing marketing push, did not really end all that well. But the company’s developer-facing Spectacles 5 were warmly received last year, and they have apparently succeeded in making the next-gen Specs lighter, smaller, and generally more, well, wearable. Perhaps the upgrades — and maybe even one or two must-have apps — will help the new and improved Specs find more fans when they drop in 2026.
OpenAI drops o3-pro: The TWiST 500 regulars and everyone’s favorite (or least favorite, depending on your POV) AI company dropped an elite, “pro” version of its latest reasoning model, aimed specifically at enterprises and teams. O3-pro costs $20 per million input tokens, and $80 per million output tokens. (For reference, a million tokens works out to around 750,000 words.) The new model can access some powerful tools, including real-time search and use of Python, but it also has a few surprising limitations. It can’t make images, for example, and it doesn’t yet offer support for OpenAI’s workspace app, Canvas.
Enterprise search startup Glean raises $150M: The TWiST 500 company produces AI-powered products that help companies keep their data organized and searchable across apps like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Slack. They secured a $150M Series F this week, putting the valuation at around $7.2 billion. So far, Glean’s on a rocket ship to the moon; just three years post-launch, their ARR has already surpassed $100 million.

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San Francisco’s Scale AI produces training data, benchmarks and evaluation services that help to gauge the success rate of Large Language Models (LLMs), along with other services like “data labeling,” “data annotation,” and other essential behind-the-scenes tasks that keep large-scale AI projects not just effective but safe.

The company’s been at this mission since 2016, a good deal prior to the current AI craze. It’s been an up and down journey — the company semi-infamously laid off about 20% of its workforce via email just a few years ago — but Scale’s had a huge 2025 so far. Revenue is apparently on track to hit $2 billion, roughly doubling 2024’s numbers. And now Scale seems on the verge of a new mega-deal with Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram owner Meta.

The Information reports that Meta is close to putting $15 billion in Scale — its largest-ever investment in an external company — for which it would receive a 49% stake. But it seems Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg is not purely after Scale’s technology, though his company could use some help keeping pace with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

He’s reportedly assembling a brain trust of around 50 experts in effort to finally crack Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the still-theoretical “supercomputer” that will be able to out-think a human mind (and then will hopefully decide not to kill us all). Zuck apparently wants Scale co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to be part of his digital Manhattan Project.

For his part, Wang does seem to be something of an AI accelerationist. He memorably placed an ad in the Washington Post earlier this year, calling on President Trump to increase American investment in AI, in order to stay safely ahead of the Chinese. So perhaps he and Zuck see eye-to-eye on our desperate need to invent true artificial intelligence ASAP, and this is the partnership that finally gets us to SkyNet. (Finally!) – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2136: Jason’s calling in from the coast for a special Monday episode, chatting with Alex about the sky-high valuations for many new Y Combinator companies, despite their relatively low ARRs. What does this mean for the investment landscape more generally? Plus the guys are taking Office Hours with CustomerIQ founder Sean Steigerwald, exploring his startup’s AI sales agents that live inside your email inbox.

E2135: On a brand-new bicoastal TWiST, Jason checks in from LA, while Alex remains at home on the East Coast. They’re talking about Circle’s explosive IPO, and what it means for the markets and crypto looking forward. PLUS the benefits of tokenizied venture capital funds, more crazy Cursor growth, deeper insight into the Anthropic-Windsurf kerfuffle and more details on the Deel-Rippling espionage saga.

E2134: Jason’s away, so Alex and Lon are handling TWiST all on their lonesome. They’re talking about Anthropic cutting off Windsurf ahead of its rumored OpenAI deal, the ongoing deal between Rippling and Deel, and a few stories that don’t actually contain the word “deal.” PLUS Alex chats with Garrett Langley from the in-the-news surveillance startup Flock Safety. (Don’t worry, Jason will be back on Friday.)

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