Trending Thursday #24

Here’s what’s been trending in Tech & VC this week:

• AI's 300M Job Apocalypse: Goldman Sachs warns AI could affect 300M full-time jobs worldwide, while companies report record productivity

• The $40B AI Return-on-Nothing: MIT drops bombshell that 95% of orgs get zero return on enterprise AI investment, burning billions to make millions

• Big Tech's VC Takeover: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia now control over half of all global AI venture investment, a crazy concentration

• Big Tech's $36M Lobbying Blitz: 8 big tech companies spend $36M in H1 2025 to shape AI regulation, including trying to strip states' regulatory power

• Meta's $600B AI Gamble: Zuck commits over $600B by 2028 for AI data centers, buying 1.3 million GPUs in 2025 alone for one gigawatt of computing

As we continue to build at Context Ventures, we've launched Startup Intros with a simple mission: to help early-stage founders find the right investors, faster and smarter.

🎈 Record Productivity, Zero Returns: AI's Broken Promise

📊 When Earnings Can't Justify the Hype

The AI chip leaders took a beating in mid-November, with Nvidia plunging 11.3% and Broadcom cratering 14.1% as investors finally did the math on sky-high valuations:

• Nvidia Down 11.3%: Lost over $350B in market cap in a single session

• Broadcom Down 14.1%: Worst single-day drop since 2022

• Strong Earnings, Brutal Selloff: Growth was "robust" but not robust enough for these valuations

• Reality Check Moment: Traders reassessed growth projections against rising infrastructure costs

The Message: When your quarterly earnings beat expectations but your stock still craters by double digits, the market is screaming that it's already priced in the next decade of growth. The AI boom isn't dead, but the free money phase just ended. Even winning isn't winning when expectations reach orbit.

📉 The Productivity Paradox Gets a Body Count

AI is driving record productivity while killing jobs at recession-level pace, creating what economists are calling a "hidden recession" where companies celebrate efficiency gains while payrolls stagnate:

• 1M+ Jobs Eliminated: US alone in 2025, representing a 65% surge over last year

• 300M Jobs at Risk: Goldman Sachs' estimate for global positions vulnerable to AI automation

• Record Productivity, Flat Payrolls: Companies report efficiency gains while barely hiring

• Recession-Level Layoffs: Job cuts matching Great Recession pace despite "strong" indicators

The Brutal Reality: Fortune warns that this creates a brewing "governance crisis" as policymakers struggle to adapt faster than algorithms eliminate positions. When work becomes scarce, societies ration opportunity. This isn't the promised land of universal basic income and creative liberation.

💸 The 95% Zero-ROI Club Gets Exclusive Membership

MIT dropped a bomb that nobody wanted to hear: 95% of organizations are getting zero return on their AI investments despite enterprises dumping $30-40B into generative AI:

• 95% Zero ROI: Nearly every enterprise AI deployment produces no measurable returns

• $30-40B Enterprise Investment: Burning billions to make millions, per MIT analysis

• Valuation Bubble Concerns: The math finally caught up with the hype

• "Burning Billions to Make Millions": MIT's exact phrasing for the current state

Translation: Companies are spending GDP-scale money on AI infrastructure while the overwhelming majority can't point to a single dollar of return. This isn't adoption lag; it's a fundamental question about whether current AI capabilities justify current AI spending.

🏰 AI Companies Become Banks, Builders & Lobbyists

🏦 Four Companies Own Half the AI Gold Rush

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia now control over 50% of all global AI-related venture investment, a level of capital concentration not seen since the dot-com boom:

• >50% Concentration: Four companies control more than half of all AI VC dollars

• Dot-Com Parallels: Last time capital concentrated like this, we got 2000

• Vertical Integration on Steroids: Funding the picks-and-shovels while mining the gold

• Strategic Moat-Building: They're not just investing; they're controlling the ecosystem

The Reality: This isn't VC: it's strategic dependency creation with extra steps:

• Microsoft backs OpenAI while building competing models.

• Google funds Anthropic while developing Gemini.

• Amazon invests in dozens of AI companies while selling them AWS compute.

• Nvidia powers everyone while launching its own AI services.

When four companies fund half the ecosystem, every "independent" AI startup is actually choosing which Big Tech patron to depend on.

💸 Big Tech's Other AI Investment: Buying Congress

While everyone watches the infrastructure spending spree, Big Tech quietly dropped $36M on lobbying in H1 2025, including a stealth attempt to strip states of their power to regulate AI:

• $36M in Six Months: Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Anthropic, and AMD combined

• Federal Preemption Push: Lobbying to prevent states from creating their own AI rules

• Multi-Front Assault: Targeting Congress, the White House, and executive agencies

• Meta's Record Quarter: $8M in Q1 alone, up 43% from Q4 2024, their highest quarterly spend ever

Translation: The same companies racing to spend $100B+ on AI infrastructure are spending millions to ensure they write the rules governing it. The strategy mirrors Big Tech's playbook to have weak federal standards that override state laws.

💰 Meta's $600B Data Center Binge

Meta just committed over $600B through 2028 to build AI-ready data centers, eclipsing any prior tech infrastructure investment in US history:

• $600B Through 2028: That's $410M per day, every day, for four years straight

• 1+ GW by 2026: Enough power to run a mid-sized city (700K+ homes)

• 1.3M GPUs in 2025: More than Nvidia sold to all customers in 2023 combined

• Highway System Scale: More than the entire US Interstate Highway System

The Absurdity: Meta is building a parallel digital nation powered by enough electricity to light up SF twice over. When a social media company commits more capital than most countries' annual GDP to infrastructure that won't fully materialize until 2028, you're witnessing sunk cost fallacy in action.

🏗️ Anthropic Goes Full Vertical: $50B Infrastructure Empire

Anthropic just announced a $50B investment to build its own AI infrastructure empire, with custom data centers in Texas and NY operational by 2026:

• $50B Investment: More than SpaceX's entire valuation goes into concrete and cooling

• 2,400 Construction Jobs: Plus 800 permanent positions once facilities are operational

• Custom-Designed Facilities: Purpose-built for Anthropic's workloads via Fluidstack partnership

• 2026 Timeline: Two years from announcement to operational data centers

The Transformation: The AI safety company is now also a real estate developer, construction manager, and utilities negotiator. CEO Dario Amodei framed it as necessary for "accelerated scientific discovery," but the real story is compute independence.

🤖 Product Launch Quick Hits: AI Colonizes Everything

🤖 OpenAI's GPT-5.1 Fragmentation Strategy: Dropped multiple variants: GPT-5.1 API with "no-reasoning" mode and 24-hour prompt caching, GPT-5.1 Instant (warmer by default), and GPT-5.1 Thinking (easier to understand, faster).

🌍 Fei-Fei Li's World Model Debut: World Labs launched Marble, turning prompts and photos into editable 3D environments. The legendary AI researcher's first product lets you generate worlds from text. Finally, someone's actually building the metaverse.

🚗 Waymo Takes the Freeway: First robotaxi service offering driverless rides on freeways, now available 24/7 in San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA. Nothing says "trust in autonomous vehicles" quite like merging onto the 405 with no human backup plan.

🎮 Valve's Sub-$1K VR Gambit: Steam Frame VR headset launching 2026 for under $999, featuring dual 2160×2160 LCD panels, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16GB RAM, and 440g weight with back-mounted battery.

📚 Google's NotebookLM Goes Deep: Rolled out Deep Research to all users with fast or deep research mode options. Google's finally admitting that sometimes you need an AI that actually thinks before vomiting up an answer.

📱 Apple Wallet Becomes Your Passport: Added US passport support at TSA checkpoints for domestic iPhone and Apple Watch travel. First federal ID integration into Apple Wallet, because what could go wrong with IDs on your phone?

🔄 Personnel Quick Hits: The Great AI Talent Shuffle

🧠 Yann LeCun's Meta Exit Looms: Meta's Chief AI Scientist plans to leave in the coming months to found his own startup, currently in early fundraising. It’s an issue when one of the godfathers of deep learning decides Meta isn't visionary enough.

💻 Intel Loses CTO to OpenAI: Sachin Katti, Intel's CTO and AI officer, is leaving after four years to join OpenAI. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will take over AI efforts because nothing screams "we've got this handled" like your CEO taking over when your AI chief bails.

💰 Parag's Post-Twitter Payday: Former Twitter CEO now running Parallel Web Systems, which raised $100M Series A at $740M valuation for AI agent web search tools. Getting fired by Elon apparently comes with renewed funding appeal.

💸 What Other Startups are Popping Off

Here's a roundup of this week's trending startup activity:

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

• Kimi K2 Thinking: The 1T parameter open-source thinking model.

• Sendr: Your complete GTM stack, powered by AI.

• Oskar by Skarbe: AI agent in your inbox that follows up automatically.

• Talo: All-in-one AI translator: calls, events, streaming & API.

• Emma: AI nutrition intelligence that understands food globally.

• Happyverse: Create an interactive AI video avatar of yourself!

• Video Localization by Algebras: Culturally accurate dubbing that feels human.

• Chatter: Discover which reddit investors make it big and how often.

• AI Context Flow: Reusable AI memory for smarter prompts anywhere.

• Sensay AI Offboarding: AI offboarding that captures knowledge.

🛠️ Developer Tools

• Secure MCP by Arcade.dev: Skip migration and launch MCP with built-in Auth.

• Layrr: Framer for your actual codebase.

• NocoBase 2.0: Model your data, then build apps with blocks and actions.

• Shadcnblocks: The ultimate block set for shadcn/ui, Tailwind, and React.

• Superapp: Build native iOS apps with AI & Swift.

• YouWare Mobile: A vibe coding engineer in your pocket.

• TRAE SOLO: The responsive coding agent.

• Webflow App Gen: Build full-stack web apps natively in Webflow with AI.

• JDoodle.ai: Vibe app builder with free bug fixes, db and PAYG credits.

• Logo.dev: Reliable logos for any product, instantly.

• Documenso 2.0.0: Enterprise-grade signature infrastructure for everyone.

💼 Business & Productivity

• BlogBowl: Keyword-driven AI articles auto-posted to your blog.

• Cal ID: Schedule and monetize meetings for free.

• Gempod: A treasure chest for your bookmarks.

• Customer Feedback Portal for Jira: Build with customer feedback in Jira.

• TheySaid 3.0: The everything app, for feedback.

• StoryMotion: Engaging animated diagrams, flowcharts made easy.

📊 Marketing & Sales

• Passionfruit Labs: Turn AI mentions & citations into revenue.

• TrustMRR: The database of verified startup revenues.

🌟 Editor's Note

At Startup Intros, our mission is to bring the latest founder-investor news straight to your inbox, keeping you ahead in the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley.

💭 Parting Thoughts

The math has never been more brutal or clearer: companies are celebrating record productivity while cutting over a million jobs. Enterprises are burning billions on AI investments that 95% admit produce zero returns. And the most famous bubble-caller of the 21st century just looked at the whole mess, shorted the leaders, and walked away.

Forward to a friend or hit reply to let me know what you're seeing in your world.

Till next time!

P.S. Raised this week, and we missed you? Want to be featured? Have tips or funding questions? Reply or DM us as we’re here to help.

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