everything you need to read this week by @stephthefounder (December 15th)

The goal is to be the best weekly newsletter to be the most succinct + fun way to learn about all the best things you need to know across tech, startups, VC, etc, sent out every Monday. (and at the minimum, it will include the links I post about every week on instagram!). Feedback (and a better/more creative newsletter name than the boring one I have now) always welcome!

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happy last full work week of the year to those who celebrate 🙃

thank you to everyone who responded last week <3 we’re still working through responses!

ICYMI, for those of you who are looking for a new job in tech (or recently landed one), it would mean a lot if you took ~5 minutes to fill out this form. we (my team at PIN) are building some new tools + content around helping people find great startup and tech jobs they love and are looking to get feedback from people who are actively or recently finished searching. your feedback / questions will help us build the best possible product to help (and/or featured in content) so know it’s important and every response is read x

we also have a new site up (for top startup jobs + ones where you can get $$$ for referring friends/coworkers you think highly of)! fittingly with a new URL 😉:

http://www.companiesthatwillmakeyouamillionaire.com/

more coming soon x

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💰 Companies that will make you a millionaire

Every week I highlight a few of my favorite startups that I personally think are really promising. They’ve typically received funding that week + are hiring, and occasionally I’ll include some special bonus ones.

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And now you can easily earn some cold hard cash 💰: you can now use PINpoint (a fun product my company has been building) to earn $$ (anywhere from $5K to $30K) for successfully referring people to top startups. The brilliant part about this is:

1. you don’t even need to know the person who’s ultimately hired - if you post a link on LinkedIn and the algorithm shows it to someone who ultimately clicks the link and is hired, you get the $$$ 😏

2. all of these companies are great and highly respected, so your friend (or random person who saw your post) will also thank you 😉 win win

(PS are you a founder or do you work at a cool startup that’s hiring? reply back with the name so we can give you guys a shout!)

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This week’s featured companies:

• Boom Supersonic: Making supersonic travel a reality and powering the AI era. Boom is building both a next-gen supersonic airliner and a natural gas turbine to run AI data centers. The Denver startup just raised a $300M Series B led by Darsana Capital Partners, with Altimeter Capital, ARK Invest, Bessemer, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator also participating.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Fal : AI models for any media, at scale. Fal hosts image, video, and audio AI models for developers, letting teams run and integrate complex AI without building infrastructure from scratch. The five-year-old San Francisco startup raised a $140M Series D at a $4.5B valuation, led by Sequoia Capital, with Kleiner Perkins, Alkeon, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bessemer joining in.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Unconventional AI: Rethinking AI hardware from the ground up. This two-month-old startup is developing a more energy-efficient computer specifically for AI workloads, aiming to cut costs and power needs drastically. It raised a $475M seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed, with Lux Capital, DCVC, Databricks, Jeff Bezos, and founder Naveen Rao also contributing.

  • Job openings can be found here

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

• Serval (AI‑native IT service management platform) 💼 → $75M Series B (Job openings here)

• Cofounder (autonomous support agents) 💬 → $8.7M seed (Job openings here)

• Radial (infra for mental health care) 🧠 → $50M Series A (Job openings here)

• Pryzm (AI defense procurement) 🛡️ → $12.2M seed (Job openings here)

• Resemble AI (deepfake detection) 🎭 → $13M round (Job openings here)

• Quanta (accounting platform for startups) 📊 → $15M Series A (Job openings here)

• LizzyAI (AI talent interviewing) 👥 → $5M seed (Job openings here)

• Airwallex (cross‑border banking + payments) 🌏 → $330M round (Job openings here)

🤓 Best things to read instead of doomscrolling

no sunday post this week, but here are some things i loved

1. Is It a Bubble? by Howard Marks - a long but interesting/thoughtful read re thoughts on whether we’re in an AI bubble (and how it compares to bubbles of the past)

2. They answered an ad for surrogates and found themselves in a nightmare from the NYT: I admittedly still have ~25% to go but the stories in this article blew my mind and broke my heart. It reminded me of themes of a book I read earlier this year (and loved) called The Snakehead. Completely different subject matter, but another reminder of the frequent exploitation that happens when taking advantage of people who are so desperately and earnestly looking for a better life 🥲

3. AI slop is ruining reddit for everyone - was so surprised by my IG story poll results that most people don’t feel like this is true! As someone who uses Reddit to check reviews of (almost) everything before I purchase, I hope it stays slop and undisclosed-sponsored-post free

📱 Everything you may have missed in tech/startup news

All the most important things that happened last week, from intellectual to guilty pleasure and optimistic to cringe:

SIGNAL x CRINGE:

1. OpenAI unveils GPT‑5.2 after “code red” to one‑up Google’s Gemini (less hallucinations but still not AGI)

2. New report: AI multiples are declining but still insane (18x-138x) compared to SaaS multiples (8x)…

3. ... meanwhile VCs are struggling to raise money for their own funds (lowest levels since 2017)

4. DeepSeek may have used smuggled Nvidia GPUs to train its latest model

SIGNAL x BASED:

1. you’ll soon find your favorite Disney characters on Sora (and OpenAI is $1B richer after Disney investment)

2. Fed cut the federal funds rate by 0.25% to 3.50–3.75%; stocks hit recent highs

3. India’s AI / cloud ecosystem gets ~$50B investment from Microsoft / Amazon

4. Slack’s CEO Denise Dresser leaves to join OpenAI to run global revenue and enterprise strategy

NOISE x CRINGE:

1. Users are spending hours a day talking to AI Santa

2. iPad kids are being replaced by AI chat bot teens (30% now talk to AI chatbots every day)

3. Roomba files for bankruptcy 🥲

4. 19 Epstein photos released: Trump, Clinton, Gates among those pictured

5. Rubio bans State Dept from using Calibri font because it’s too DEI

NOISE x BASED:

1. Hinge’s CEO leaves to build a new AI dating service called Overtone

2. Senior at Stanford announces new exposé about Stanford (out May 2026)

3. IG is testing new feature that gives you more control over your algorithm

4. you can now buy your groceries (via Instacart) or edit your photos (via Adobe) in ChatGPT

🤝 Cool things from this community

every week I want to highlight cool projects, opportunities, fundings, etc from this community! these are free and are curated for things that are the most helpful/inspiring/interesting for other members of this group. for more context and to submit any cool projects etc, please see here! (they’ll be reviewed on a rolling basis every Sunday(ish))

(Please note a feature here is not an explicit endorsement unless specifically stated — I do light diligence but given time/resource constraints, am not doing rigorous diligence (so please do your own research before spending lots of time and money, etc.)

• congrats to Valerie for the launch of Ruth, to help close the $1M gender wage gap 💰 see and follow the full launch video here!

• a mindblowing (and cool and scary) paper from a company i love and have featured before, GPTZero! if you care about protecting the internet (and especially reputable content sources) from AI slop, this is a company i recommend tracking closely.

• Luba (an OG creator + engineer + founder) has launched the Luba Show, a cool interview series of some of the most interesting people building cool things and influencing the world. I knew her from Tech/startup YT before I knew her IRL and given how much knowledge/experience she has, I’m v excited to see her posting content again 🥰 also follow her on IG here

• Cool job openings across engineering/design/growth at 10x (thank you Cherry for submitting!). 10x (makers of Cal AI and more) is a cool company I’ve followed for a long time especially given all the $ traction they’ve had despite being entirely bootstrapped (a leader in what I think will be a new trend of fast-growing boot-strappers who will forgo VC all together in the future!)

• Looking for holiday gifts and want to support a small biz/up and coming female founder? Dimondsea just launched some beautiful new designs (waterproof, and such a good price point!)

🤪 Just because / for fun

aka random things that I found interesting enough to screenshot or take a picture of last week

• i’m embarrassed to admit i’ve watched so much good TV recently - i’ve mentioned pluribus, all her fault, the beast in me, and i’m now on your friends and neighbors. I’m in a ~thriller with story/depth/good character development~ kick and Apple TV is on a roll:

• i was lucky enough to attend a salesforce ventures event at the plaza hotel last week - the plaza is ✨the plaza✨ (especially during the holidays) for a reason 😍

• got a giant mystery box in the mail last week only to open it and find this (yes it is full sized). duolingo marketing stunts remain unmatched. i sadly can’t keep him (small NYC apartment, very jealous boyfriend (lol jk) etc etc) so if you are a duolingo fan, reply back or comment on Substack and I’ll choose a person to send this lucky lil guy to

  

• random tech-ish gifts for people in your life that i really like and use daily (or close to it).

  a) this haribo mini power bank to charge your stuff (surprisingly powerful — and YES this is Haribo as in gummy bear Haribo; I saw someone on the train with this and couldn’t help but ask about it / saw that there is a mini cult following online about it 💀 I pre-ordered it months ago and just got it in the mail finally !!)
  
  b) xnote AI notebook + smart pen (i have used a variety of these kinds of gadgets over the years - ie notebooks you can write in with pen, but that will transcribe to a virtual copy so I can use it on my computer) and none work as well as this has. it not only digitizes your handwriting, but also transcribes it into text so you can throw it into chatgpt, a Notion/word doc, etc. it works very very very well. not sponsored but i think you can get an extra discount by using this link or code ‘stephthefounder’
  
  c) viaim ai headphones (not pictured below because they are accidentally still charging at home 🫠, but I’ve talked about them before). they record and transcribe calls - especially helpful for on-the-go or walking calls + podcasts (without losing the functionality/notetaker capability of using something like Granola or Fireflies with Zoom).

• when people don’t take life too seriously 🙏🎅🤪

<3 until next week!

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