Travis’ Uber Comeback, AGI’s Stakes, Meta’s $100M AI Hires & Prediction Market Gold Rush | E2144
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s show:
EVs are igniting a global tariff war, and Xiaomi’s shockingly cheap, high-quality electric cars threaten to obliterate Western automakers, sparking fears of a manufacturing wipeout. In today’s brand-new TWiST, Jason and Alex dive into the EV price war, Uber’s rumored plan to team up with Travis Kalanick on a self-driving takeover, and DoorDash’s mega-drones giving us a glimpse of the future of food delivery. Plus, Tesla’s cautious safety driver rollout shows we’re only in the early innings of the autonomous revolution, a consideration of Meta’s talent shopping spree, AND a new edition of Reddit Rapid Response. Don’t miss this deep dive into the future of cars, delivery, and AI.
Timestamps:
(02:24) Guess who’s BACK at Uber? On the Travis Kalahnik-Pony AI deal.
(10:43) Superpower - Visit superpower.com/twist to get $50 off your membership. This offer is only for the first 100 twist listeners who sign up.
(17:24) All the huge opportunities for Kalshi, PolyMarket and prediction markets
(19:44) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist
(25:37) TODAY’S POLYMARKET: How well will Apple’s “F1” do at the box office?
(30:03) Pilot - Visit https://www.pilot.com/twist and get $1,200 off your first year.
(31:58)What actually IS AGI? And why does it matter for the Microsoft-OpenAI negotiation?
(45:57) Inside Meta’s massive Superintelligence shopping spree: maybe it’s not so crazy to pay AI experts $100M?
(01:05:15) Reddit Rapid Response: Can you be a great founder if you hate doing cold sales?
Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com
Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
Follow Lon:
Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow Jason:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Thank you to our partners:
(10:43) Superpower - Visit superpower.com/twist to get $50 off your membership. This offer is only for the first 100 twist listeners who sign up.
(19:44) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist(30:03) Pilot - Visit https://www.pilot.com/twist and get $1,200 off your first year.
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What you'll find is the build quality is pretty amazing. |
| 0:02.5 | This is why the tariff wars are upon us. |
| 0:06.2 | I think a lot of the EU, the United States, they're all like, yeah, you're not going to be able to sell this in America without a 100% tariff or a 50% tariff. |
| 0:14.9 | Or it will wipe out. |
| 0:16.8 | When I say wipe out, I mean wipe out all European car manufacturers, all American car manufacturers. |
| 0:22.8 | It would be devastating. |
| 0:24.9 | And that's why places like Korea don't allow these things to be imported. |
| 0:29.2 | This weekend startups is brought to you by Superpower. |
| 0:33.0 | Visit superpower.com slash twist to get $50 off your membership. |
| 0:36.6 | This offer is only for the first 100 |
| 0:38.3 | twist listeners who sign up. Limmon.io. Hire pre-vetted remote developers, get 15% off your |
| 0:44.2 | first four weeks of developer time at lemon.io slash twist. And, Pilot. Focus on your product. Let Pilot |
| 0:51.7 | handle your bookkeeping. Pilot provides the most reliable accounting, CFO, and tax services for startups and small businesses. |
| 0:58.2 | Head to pilot.com slash twist and get $1,200 off your first year. |
| 1:01.8 | All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. I am your host, Jason Calcana. |
| 1:06.7 | It's been doing this since 2010. Oh, my Lord. Holy crap. |
| 1:11.5 | Yeah, it's a long time. |
| 1:12.8 | And my co-host Alex Wilhelm is here. |
| 1:14.4 | How are you, Alex? |
| 1:15.7 | I'm good. |
| 1:16.6 | It wasn't 10,000 degrees today in the Northeast. |
| 1:19.3 | It actually rained a little bit. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jason Calacanis, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jason Calacanis and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.