What happens if China pulls the plug on open-source AI? | Ep 21

More from This Week in AI

1. 

   E24 · 30 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   Are we already in the Singularity? | E24

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Open Today’s show: On a podcast this week, Sam Altman made a bold declaration: “We are now, like, in the singularity.” A bold claim which Alex puts bluntly to this week’s panel. Grant Lee of Gamma and Philip Johnston of Starcloud sound off… Is this actually the Singularity, and if so, why do things still feel so normal? Plus the panel and guest host Alex Wilhelm discuss the infrastructure and economics that will make singularity-scale AI buildout possible… NVIDIA’s strongly worded letter about open-weight models… Moonshot’s new Kimi K3 twist…

2. 

   E23 · 23 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

   America already lost one AI race | TWiAI Ep 23

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL OPEN Today’s show: This week, our panel of AI experts — Anand Kannappan (Patronus AI), Ori Goshen (AI21 Labs), and Alex Finn (Henry Intelligent Machines) — join special guest host Lon Harris to debate whether Washington will move to formally limit powerful foreign AI models like Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Z.ai ’s GLM-5.2. What does “winning the AI race” actually mean on a practical level? Why is cybersecurity, not benchmarks, likely the actual battleground. And why did Hugging Face have to use GLM-5.2 to investigate their recent breach rather…

3. 

   E22 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

   Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 kick off Token Price Wars | E22

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL OPEN Today’s show: The price of tokens keeps tumbling down, and it’s changing who controls AI. Grok 4.5 and GLM-5.2 landed within two weeks of one another, offering powerful alternatives at a fraction of frontier prices. But are SpaceXAI’s latest offering and open weight models truly ready to replace Opus, GPT-5.5, and Fable? Are enterprises finally ready to stop renting and start owning their intelligence? On TWiAI Episode 22, Jason and Lon welcome three top founders — Sara Hooker (Adaption Labs), Manu Sharma (Labelbox), and Spiros Xanthos…

4. 

   E20 · 2 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

   Mythos, Sonnet 5, GLM-5.2 Dominate the News Cycle | Episode 20

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL Today’s show: The US government won’t let you use the most powerful releases from US AI labs… but a Chinese lab is giving away their latest frontier model for free. This week, we’ve got three AI CEOs building in image generation (Victor Perez of Krea), mobile agents (Div Garg of The AGI Company), and enterprise governance (Andrew Berman of Runlayer). Together, they’re breaking down what’s really happening underneath all this chaos, and why the industry’s more focused on “minimum viable intelligence” over breaking benchmarks. Guests Victor…

5. 

   E19 · 25 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 13 min

   Are world models the unlock for Physical AI? | Episode 19

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Today’s show: *When we think of “Physical AI,” most of us conjure images of humanoid robots and self-driving cars. But there’s a lot more to the category than just breakdancing Chinese bots and Waymos, from excavators autonomously digging tomorrows worksites, to a robot the size of four pizza boxes deploying to the ISS. Guest host Alex Wilhelm sits down with three founders in the trenches of the Physical AI Space: Boris Sofman of Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction equipment Jeff Hawke of Odyssey, a frontier AI lab…

6. 

   E18 · 18 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 21 min

   Why AI Models Aren’t the Product Any More | TWiAI Ep 18

   SpaceX bought Cursor for $60 billion. Satya Nadella says companies need to stop relying on third party AI models and build their own “token capital.” The focus is shifting from LLMs to the application layer sitting on top of them. Here to unpack what that means are guest experts Ali Ansari (Micro1) and Ryan Daniels (Crosby).Plus we get a sneak peek at their new contract redlining benchmark, a crucial eval for how well LLMs don’t just answer questions about the law, but demonstrate actual legal reasoning.Timestamps:0:00 SpaceX acquires Cursor7:36 Distillation vs. building your own model19:43…

7. 

   8 Oct 2026 · 45 minNew

   Data Centers Aren't Killing the Grid. They Could SAVE It.

   Thanks to our partner, @Paypal! Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co/Today’s show:Demand for AI requires America to build data centers faster than the power grid can connect them. Varun Sivaram of Emerald AI joins Jason with a counterintuitive idea: what if we made data centers more flexible, capable of slowing down intelligently when the grid is most stressed? (That only happens a few hundred hours each year.)PLUS, Vibhav Viswanathan of Pascal AI demos his product, which gives AI agents working for hedge funds…

8. 

   1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 21 min

   Is Meta's Muse agent reading your iMessages, even after you decline access? | E33

   This Week In Startups is made possible by:PayPal: https://paypal.com/businessToday’s show:OpenAI is delaying GPT-6.1 Astra after UK government testers found GPT-6 Astra launched unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in 29% of simulated runs. Jason and Lon are joined by George Sivulka of Hebbia, Scott Stephenson of Deepgram, and Dan Mishin of Manifest OS to discuss whether the industry's sudden safety panic is a real alarm or a response to cheap open-source models.Learn why Scott has let an internal tool called "Bodyman" record his screen, mic and speakers for eight months so it can whisper…

9. 

   E32 · 24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

   Why OpenAI Should Buy Off the World’s Top Mathematicians | E32

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co Today’s show: OpenAI is claiming to have solved more than 100 math problems on top of Navier-Stokes, and guest Richard Socher thinks it's absurd for mathematicians to push back on AI solving their problems too quickly. Jason and Lon are also joined by Guy Podjarny of Tessl and Jake Loosararian of Gecko Robotics to argue over who wins when AI agents start collaborating with, and potentially replacing, academics and scholars.…

10. 

    E31 · 17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 13 min

    The biggest AI threat still comes from humans | E31

    This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal: paypal.launch.co Today’s show: Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are apparently scared of AI models going rogue. Swarms of agents spontaneously deciding to copy themselves over to thousands of computer systems and plot world domination. Our panelists this week — Kevin Mandia (Armadin) and Soups Ranjan (Sardine AI) — investigate real AI-based attacks every single day, and they suggest we’re hyping the wrong concerns. The actual danger isn’t coming from an AI system that turns hostile. It’s human beings, like criminals, using AI to drain your bank…

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