This week, tech giants decided that building Manhattan-sized data centers and actual power plants is totally normal business strategy, while robotaxis proved they still can't handle a light drizzle without adult supervision.
From Meta's $72B infrastructure bet to Tesla's $4.20 "autonomous" rides that require three babysitters, the gap between AI ambition and reality has never been more expensive or entertaining.
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.
🎯 BLUF: Bottom Line Upfront
Meta's Going Full SimCity: Zuck's building Manhattan-sized data centers, spending $72B this year alone to win the AI race
Pennsylvania is the New Silicon Valley: $90B+ in AI infrastructure commitments, as you can't run superintelligence without actual power
China's Robotaxis Just Went Global: Uber partnered with Baidu to deploy thousands of autonomous vehicles across Asia & the Middle East
Waymo's Math Doesn't Math: They hit 100M autonomous mile,s but trips have plateaued as they may not be serving more users
Tesla's "Autonomous" Cars Need Three Babysitters: Six months late, Tesla's Austin robotaxis launched with much supervision
🔌 The New Gold Rush: Why Tech Giants Are Building Power Plants to Feed Their AI Dreams
zuck on Threads: We're actually building several multi-GW clusters.
🔥 Meta's Manhattan-Sized Bet on Superintelligence
Mark Zuckerberg just went full Tony Stark, announcing Meta will build multiple data centers the size of Manhattan in a move that makes other tech giants' AI investments look like pocket change.
The scale is absolutely bonkers:
Prometheus (Ohio, 2026): Meta's first 1GW+ supercluster
Hyperion (Louisiana): Scaling to 5GW or enough to power a million homes
Price Tag: "Hundreds of billions" with $72B capex this year alone
Going Giga: SemiAnalysis confirms Meta's on track to be the first lab with a gigawatt-scale facility. For context, most data centers measure in megawatts. This is like going from a Toyota Corolla to a rocket ship.
The Strategy: After getting embarrassed by GPT-4, Zuck is promising "industry-leading compute per researcher" at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Thus, if you can't out-innovate them, out-spend them.
⚡ The AI Gold Rush Just Hit Pennsylvania Coal Country
Meta is not alone. Blackstone just dropped $25B to turn Pennsylvania into AI's power plant, building data centers and the natural gas facilities to feed them.
Here’s the Pennsylvania pile-on:
Blackstone: $25B for data centers + power plants (colocation strategy)
Google: $25B+ across the Mid-Atlantic
CoreWeave: $6B Lancaster data center
Total: $90B+ announced (more than most countries' GDP)
The Real Play: While everyone fights over GPUs, Blackstone is solving the actual bottleneck of power. Pennsylvania produces 20% of America's natural gas, and you can't run AI on vibes alone.
The Irony: The Rust Belt that lost manufacturing to China is now ground zero for America's AI infrastructure arms race against... China. Sometimes history doesn't repeat, it remixes.
🎭 The Self-Driving Circus: International Expansion, Growing Pains, and Human Babysitters
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
🤝 The Alliance That Makes Tesla Look Like a Science Fair Project
While Elon's robotaxis are learning to navigate Austin, Uber just teamed up with China's Baidu to drop thousands of autonomous vehicles across Asia and the Middle East.
The partnership details are mind-blowing:
Apollo Go's Track Record: 11M+ rides completed across 15 Chinese cities (that's more than Waymo globally)
The Rollout: Thousands of robotaxis launching this year in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and beyond
The Strategy: Uber provides the platform, Baidu brings the proven tech
Why This Matters: Baidu's Apollo Go isn't some startup burning VC cash. They're already operating at scale in the world's most chaotic traffic environments. If you can navigate Beijing rush hour autonomously, Dubai is basically easy mode.
The geopolitical angle is fascinating too. While the US wrings its hands about Chinese tech, Uber is essentially saying, "forget the politics, let's make money," as they’ve already partnered with Waymo, WeRide, and Avride.
🤔 Waymo Hit 100M Miles But Forgot to Mention Something Important
Waymo dropped a celebratory press release Tuesday: 100M fully autonomous miles completed! Pop the champagne! Except... something doesn't add up.
The weird math:
February: 200,000+ trips per week (per Sundar Pichai)
April: 250,000+ trips per week (5x growth from the previous year!)
Today: Still... 250,000+ trips per week?
The Reality Check: Waymo's miles are exploding (10x in two months!, but actual rides have plateaued. It seems they're driving longer distances in sprawling cities like LA, not necessarily serving more customers.
For context, Lyft does 18.2M rides per week, so Waymo's 250k looks less impressive when you realize they're in five major cities and growing... nowhere fast.
👶 Tesla's Robotaxi Needs Adult Supervision (Literally)
Six months after Musk promised "unsupervised full self-driving" in Austin by June, Tesla's robotaxis are finally on the road. With supervision. Lots of it.
The "Autonomous" Setup:
Safety monitor in the front passenger seat (ready to grab the wheel)
Remote operators monitoring/controlling from afar
Service suspended during rain (because Texas never has bad weather?)
Price: $4.20 per ride (yes, it's a weed joke)
The Early Reviews: Tesla influencers with financial stakes in the company love it! But their own videos show less-than-smooth rides: phantom braking, crossing double yellow lines, and safety monitors intervening to avoid UPS trucks.
The Sensor Debate Rages On: While every other robotaxi company uses lidar + radar + cameras, Tesla insists cameras alone are enough. As Cummings notes: "There is no robotic system that is safety critical that has ever been successful on a single sensor strain."
While Baidu's completing millions of rides in Chinese megacities and Waymo's cruising through LA, Tesla can't handle Austin drizzle without human help.
⚡ Quick Hits: Big AI Agent Edition
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
Thomas Tunguz says that “If 2025 is the year of agents, then 2026 will surely belong to agent managers.” Here are some rumors and releases from this week:
🤖 ChatGPT Gets Its Own PC (And Access to Your Gmail): OpenAI just launched "ChatGPT agent" for Pro users ($200/month), which gives the AI its own virtual PC to browse the web, run code, and access your email/GitHub accounts.
📊 ChatGPT Coming for Excel's Lunch Money: OpenAI is adding "agent" features that let users create spreadsheets and presentations directly in ChatGPT, complete with buttons for one-click document creation.
🛒 ChatGPT Will Cut Out Your Shopping Cart: OpenAI is building a checkout system to keep purchases inside of ChatGPT and take commissions from merchants, with Sam Altman eyeing a 2% "affiliate fee" on transactions.
🏗️ AWS Opens the Agent Floodgates (Even to OpenAI): Amazon AWS unveiled Bedrock AgentCore, letting customers build AI agents using ANY model, including rivals like OpenAI, with open-source tools.
🔌 Claude Can Now Touch Your Apps (With Permission): Anthropic's Claude can now connect directly to Notion, Canva, Stripe, and other tools through their new Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors.
💼 Claude Gets a Bloomberg Terminal Envy: Anthropic launched "Claude for Financial Services" to run due diligence, market research, and investment advice with actual financial data from FactSet, PitchBook, and Morningstar.
💸 What Other Startups are Popping Off
Here’s a roundup of this week’s trending startup activity:
🎬 AI Content Creation & Media
Clueso: Transform raw screen recordings into studio-quality product videos in minutes - no editing skills required
Magic Animator by Lottielab: Animate your Figma designs in seconds with AI, export as Lottie, GIF, or MP4 for any platform
OpenArt AI: Turn any idea into captivating visual stories with one-click video generation and AI-powered creativity
Whisk by Google Labs: Generate images using images as prompts instead of text - remix subjects, scenes, and styles visually
Speech in Flow by Google: Bring static images to life with AI-generated custom dialogue powered by Google's Veo 3
🔧 AI Development Infrastructure
TensorBlock Forge: One unified API for all AI models - switch providers in 3 lines of code with OpenAI compatibility
opencode: Open-source terminal AI agent supporting Claude, OpenAI, Google, and local models with native TUI
Intervo: Open-source platform for building sophisticated phone, voice, and chat AI agents beyond closed platforms
TestSprite 2.0: AI testing agent that validates code, runs tests, and suggests fixes - your coding agent's best partner
21st.dev: Marketplace for creating, remixing, and monetizing UI components with AI assistance
Untitled UI React: World's largest collection of open-source React components with Tailwind CSS integration
Dualite Alpha: Local-first AI builder for mobile and web apps with all data staying in your browser
📊 Business Intelligence & Automation
Stepfun Diligence Check: AI-powered search with multi-agent citation verification to combat misinformation
iftrue: Engineering manager's Slack copilot connecting GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Jira for team insights
Brain MAX by ClickUp: All-in-one AI app with premium reasoning models, talk-to-text, and app integrations for $9/month
MCP for Google Sheets: Native formulas to query live Salesforce and HubSpot data directly in Sheets
Finlens: AI accounting co-pilot for QuickBooks users automating receipts, spreadsheets, and month-end closes
🌟 Community & Growth Platforms
Wibe for creators: Beautiful community platform to turn expertise into a one-person creator business with recurring revenue
Howdy: Send personalized Instagram DMs at scale while protecting account integrity - cold DMs that feel warm
Permut: AI agents for customer listening and feedback collection across WhatsApp, SMS, and web channels
🚀 Specialized Business Tools
HelloCV AI: Create Notion-style personal sites from your CV with AI on a free .cv domain
Mockin: Job interview simulator for UX/UI designers with 200+ real questions and STAR method training
Sprinto Trust Center: Your single secure shareable compliance hub for enterprise trust management
🌟 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. Our free weekly newsletter delivers curated insights, deals, and trends to help you navigate the startup ecosystem.
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💭 Parting Thoughts
The AI industry is simultaneously building cities to house their digital brains while struggling to navigate actual cities with their robot cars.
Maybe that's the perfect metaphor for 2025: we're so focused on building the infrastructure for superintelligence that we forgot to make sure regular intelligence can handle a rainy Tuesday in Austin.
Forward to a friend or hit reply to let me know what you're seeing in your world.
Till next time,
Dev Chandra
CEO @ Startup Intros
Associate @ Context VC
LinkedIn: /in/devchandra
Tim Hsia
Investor @ Context VC
Co-Founder @ Startup Intros
LinkedIn: /in/timhsia
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