Show Notes
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Today's show:
An Anthropic researcher quit this week, saying both leading labs are gambling with everyone's lives. His coworker chimed in and predicts there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will end humanity IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. Jason and Lon take it to Yohei Nakajima of Untapped Capital, Ben Lerer of Lerer Hippeau, and Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Prime, who cannot decide whether it is the greatest PR strategy in history or some kind of mass psychosis.
Learn why Jason says founders should never hand a frontier lab their proprietary data, whether or not they're offered free credits. PLUS, who really solved Navier-Stokes, and what does the OpenAI–Buckmaster fight mean for anyone doing real work inside ChatGPT or Claude?
Guests:
Yohei Nakajima on X: https://x.com/yoheinakajima
Untapped Capital: https://untapped.vc/
Ben Lerer on X: https://x.com/BenjLerer
Lerer Hippeau: https://www.lererhippeau.com/
Rebecca Lynn on X: https://x.com/VCRebecca
Canvas Prime: https://www.canvas.vc/
Relevant Links:
Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic - "gambling with our lives" https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/gambling-with-our-lives-anthropic-researcher-quits-warns-against-self-improving-ai/
Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's Alignment Science lead, on X: >10% odds within a decade — https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126
Future of Life Institute — the 2015 Puerto Rico AI safety conference Jason asks Lon to pull up → https://futureoflife.org/
Meta debuts Muse (Axios) —https://www.axios.com/2026/09/08/meta-debuts-muse-personal-ai-agent
Harmonic — https://harmonic.ai/twist
China blocks Meta's Manus acquisition (CNBC) —https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/27/meta-manus-china-blocks-acquisition-ai-startup.html
OpenAI fought dirty— https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/
Savvy Wealth — https://www.wealthmanagement.com/ria-news/savvy-wealth-raises-100m-valuation-hits-600m
Augmodo — https://www.augmodo.com/
E2B — https://e2b.dev/
Daptic — https://www.daptic.com/
Timestamps:
0:00 Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic: "crunch time" and "endgame"
4:53 Evan Hubinger: >10% odds AI kills all humans in a decade
11:22 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain
12:23 "You have succeeded in scaring the bejesus out of Americans"
14:59 Jobs, the wealth divide, and which industries get wiped out first
20:07 NetSuite - For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST
21:09 Savvy Wealth's $100M round
26:52 The Kalanick story and why Jason built a syndicate backstop
29:04 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
30:16 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
32:05 Meta ships Muse
32:56 Can Meta be trusted
35:29 Threads Metrics
49:27 Robinhood's free-share referral
51:16 NYU's Tristan Buckmaster accuses OpenAI of fighting dirty on Navier-Stokes
57:43 Jason: "It's a trap"
59:03 Harvey goes open-weight, Go.AI on-prem, Covenant Labs
1:12:22 High performing portfolio companies
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More from This Week in Startups
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist Rippling: https://rippling.ai/twist Today’s show: Jason can’t stop praising Nathan Fielder’s new A24 hybrid documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, “You Can See Everything,” and he’s insisting that Lon check it out before the next podcast. Hear his spoiler-free review, how the film upended his expectations based on Fielder’s previous work, and why Lon also recommends Lance Oppenheim’s HBO Max series “Ren Faire.” Plus, we’re talking to Clone Robotics co-founder and CEO Dhanush Radhakrishnan about why he thinks robots should not just be humanoid but should look and move precisely like humans. We’re digging deep into how his hydraulic myofiber artificial muscle technology alters and even improves on the pulley-based systems being deployed by competitors, why he thinks the models that power domestic helper-bots will be commoditized, and how quickly he thinks he can put a robo-butler in every American home. Plus we’re comparing the potential impact of Anthropic’s new Public Benefit Fund vs. Elon Musk’s plan to give every baby a share of SpaceX, and re-considering simulation theory after Odyssey dropped an artificial fruit fly brain into an artificial landscape. Guest Dhanush Radhakrishnan on X: https://x.com/dhanushisrad Clone Robotics: https://clonerobotics.com/ Related Links “You Can See Everything” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvW_N5p1q44 “You Can See Everything” on Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/you_can_see_everything John Carreyrou’s Theranos investigation (Wall Street Journal): https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 “Ren Faire” HBO Max trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZUVTrrexE “Nathan for You”: Smokers Allowed clip (Comedy Central): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttB2fYAm-8 Anthropic: Investing in the Public Benefit: https://www.anthropic.com/news/public-benefit-fund Elon Musk SpaceX pledge: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2112089556615123114 Dell’s $6.25B Invest America commitment: https://www.onedell.com/investamerica/ Odyssey Fly Simulation X post: https://x.com/odysseyml/status/2111589148146749616 Chris Williamson: “The ElevenLabs Situation is Crazy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxDNHLgWInU ElevenLabs’ Legendary Voices marketplace: https://elevenlabs.io/iconic-marketplace TWiST newsletter on Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com/ LAUNCH Careers page: https://careers.launch.co/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:10 Plaud - If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 03:18 Jason's "You Can See Everything" reaction 14:37 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 15:27 What films max out RT's critic and audience scores 20:08 Anthropic commits 5% equity to Public Benefit Fund 24:28 Would equity change how Americans feel about AI? 27:08 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 38:38 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 39:48 Dhanush from Clone Robotics joins the show 42:43 How hydraulic muscle technology actually works 54:55 When can we have our robot butlers please? 56:55 Where will Clone get its robot brains? 1:12:17 Odyssey trapped a fake fly brain in a simulated environment 1:23:09 Did ElevenLabs steal a podcaster's voice? 1:30:13 Check us out on Substack! Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twist
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
This Week In Startups is made possible by: