KPop Demon Hunters breaks records, Grok speeds up, and an AI-powered browser deep dive | E2171
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s show:
*“KPop Demon Hunters” is one of the year’s biggest smashes… AFTER Sony sold it off to Netflix for cheap! Hear about what went wrong with one of the year’s worst deals…
PLUS Grok is counting on SPEED to help it outpace rivals… How Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) ran into trouble on the podcast circuit… Nvidia’s big earnings report, and why everyone is watching that company in particular SO closely… PLUS a new Polymarket predicting the future of OpenAI!
Timestamps:
(0:00) How Sony missed out on “Kpop Demon Hunters”
(10:15) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today.
(11:20) Show continues…
(13:59) Why some politicians struggle so much on podcasts
(19:30) AWS Activate - AWS Activate helps startups bring their ideas to life. Apply to AWS Activate today to learn more. Visit aws.amazon.com/startups/credits
(20:53) Show continues…
(30:24) Alphasense - Get deeper insights into your business with the power of AI search and market intelligence. Start with a free trial at https://www.alpha-sense.com/twist
(31:37) Grok is relying on SPEED to outpace rivals… and it’s working
(41:23) Are AI companies playing a mega-budget game of chicken?
(42:31) Why everyone’s watching Nvidia’s earnings so closely
(47:50) Jason says he’ll NEVER go back to a non-AI browser
(53:32) Polymarket: Is OpenAI going to release their own browser?
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What's interesting about this is we're now starting to see a couple of different cohorts. |
| 0:04.6 | You got the non-Mag 7, I'll call native models, OpenAI, X-AI, Anthropic. |
| 0:12.9 | Then you got the Mac 7, in some cases, pursuing models. |
| 0:17.0 | I understand Amazon has a model now. |
| 0:19.9 | Apple was doing something in vision and images. This is Microsoft, |
| 0:24.1 | obviously. We know Gemini doing very well at Alphabet. And then meta has Lama. Laama. Yeah. |
| 0:30.5 | And then you got the Chinese companies coming in with Deep Seek and Moonshot, Baidu. And I guess the |
| 0:36.4 | question is we're now in a game of chicken. |
| 0:39.7 | With these companies, who can keep building data centers, keep raising money, and then race |
| 0:47.5 | towards the cliff, hoping that the cliff turns into a bridge with the bridge being revenue. |
| 0:55.3 | And customers willing to take out their wallets and give $20 to $200 a month, |
| 1:00.7 | you know, $250 a year to $2,000 a year to use these platforms. |
| 1:07.9 | This Week in Startups is brought to you by AlphaSense. |
| 1:12.7 | Get deeper insights into your business with the power of AI search and market |
| 1:17.7 | intelligence. |
| 1:18.7 | Start with a free trial at alpha dash sense.com slash twist. |
| 1:24.9 | AWS Activate. |
| 1:26.7 | AWS Activate helps startups bring their ideas to life. |
| 1:30.2 | As you build and scale your business, |
| 1:32.9 | activate credits grow with you to support your changing needs. |
| 1:36.5 | Apply to AWS Activate today and receive up to $100,000 in credits. |
| 1:42.2 | Visit AWS.amazon. com slash startups slash credits and dot tech say it without |
... |
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