Is open source AI really ahead of the frontier? 3 builders weigh in. | E25

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1. 

   E30 · 10 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 21 min

   OpenAI's chief scientist wants to slow down | E30

   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 paypal.launch.co Today’s show: OpenAI's chief scientist wrote a lengthy manifesto arguing that no lab has solved alignment, mere days after GPT-6 Astra shipped. Jason and Lon are joined by Tudor Achim of Harmonic, Alex Elias of Qloo, and Ahmed Ahres of Reactor to figure out if that's genuine alarm being expressed or just another pre-IPO sales pitch and play for regulatory capture. Plus news broke while we were recording! OpenAI is claiming to have…

2. 

   E29 · 3 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 30 min

   The real danger is the gap BETWEEN two robots | E29

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Today’s show: Anthropic gave AI agents hands, allowing them to control real-world equipment like robots and microscopes… but is it safe to give autonomous agents their own lasers? Gatik’s Gautam Narang says the real danger isn’t one machine like this going rogue, it’s the exploit surface hiding in the gaps between the machines. Plus, in a huge week for AI news… OpenClaw shipped its biggest release ever. AND the entire industry debated whether or not agents are forming “civilizations.” On TWiAI Ep 29, our expert panel — including Gautam…

3. 

   E28 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 11 min

   XBOW Founder: “Your Infrastructure is Not Safe” | EP 28

   This Week In Startups is made possible by:PaypalToday’s show:XBOW’s AI has held the top rank on the HackerOne leaderboard for more than a year. On TWiAI, founder Oege de Moor (who also built GitHub Copilot) tells us that no one’s infrastructure is truly safe anymore, now that open-weight models are trailing the American frontier by only a couple of months. Staging a serious cyberattack is now cheap and accessible, with attackers able to get dangerously solid results quickly from relatively cheap, open-source options from China.Guests:Runbin Dong on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/runbindongScale…

4. 

   E27 · 20 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

   Anthropic is training to destroy your company | EP 27

   This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at paypal.launch.co Today’s show: *On “All In,” Gavin Baker said that Anthropic leadership privately believes that it could one day become “the only private company in the world.” The ensuing street fight on X turned into a referendum on doomerism, the nature of regulatory capture, and why the public hates AI so darn much. Jason’s take: If a frontier lab really believes they’re destined to be the world’s only company, they’re studying your data and planning…

5. 

   E26 · 13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 28 min

   Why Anthropic is watermarking every word Claude writes | E26

   This Week In AI is made possible by: Paypal Open Today’s show: Anthropic’s new Claude watermark travels around any and all copy-and-pasted text. Is this a logical response to AI slop, or more overreach from those regulation-loving Europeans? The panel agrees that identifying AI outputs has a place, but divides on how the world should get there. PLUS everyone’s favorite section of Mark Zuckerberg’s 6500-word techno-optimist AI manifesto, exploring the frontier labs’ blatant hypocrisy around distillation, and why Texas is hitting the pause button on 474 GW of proposed data centers. Guests:…

6. 

   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…

7. 

   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…

8. 

   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…

9. 

   E21 · 9 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 21 min

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

   This Week In Startups is made possible by: PAYPAL Today’s show: China is weighing a ban on foreign access to its top AI models… the same low-cost open-weight systems on which half of the Valley’s startups are building. So we asked our two all-star panelists — Arena CEO/Co-Founder Anastasios Angelopoulos and Hippocratic AI CEO/Co-Founder Munjal Shah — what happens to US companies when their favorite cheap, powerful models vaporize overnight. PLUS why Hippocratic runs 31 models in parallel to ensure clinical-grade safety, the latency-vs-intelligence tradeoff no one is optimizing for, and why a…

10. 

    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…