Johnson

[paula wehmeyer @pallipau]

Who should lead the work on our General Intuition API?

This is an exceptionally important role that is going to work with world class technical talent to build ground breaking technology. DMs are open! CC @KentitoRollins

https://t.co/s7yuhjxmtq

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

Had a great chat with one of my favorite investors, @generalcatalyst

General Intuition x General Catalyst - The Next Phase of Pre-training

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

Detroit impressions:

• The downtown is full of beautiful buildings. All of them seem to have been built specifically in the 1920s. I guess that is after the city had accumulated enough auto wealth but before the twin hits of Modernism and the Depression. (I hadn't known that the GM Renaissance Center, built as a revitalization project, was at the time the largest private development in US history, and also at the time the world's tallest hotel. It may be large, but it is not pretty.) The downtown is surprisingly depopulated -- both the streets and the sidewalks feel empty. That said, it didn't feel at all unsafe. There are lots of great homes in the suburbs.

• The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation is amazing, and it's worth visiting Detroit for it alone. Among many (many) other things, it contains the oldest known surviving steam engine in the world, the actual Montgomery bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a deconstructed Model T, a deconstructed Eames Chair, and many great cars, agricultural equipment, locomotives, industrial specimens, and more. (They have the Lincoln Continental that JFK was riding in when assassinated -- which, apparently, was returned to service and used by several subsequent presidents.)

• The museum made me wonder why American car design peaked in the mid-60s. (This fact is very evident at the museum.) The LLMs blame the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. (Not quite https://t.co/ox5TEECH6N, but close.)

• Good food exists but it is hard to find.

• The Heidelberg Project also exists and is unique.

• We stayed at the Dearborn Inn, which is wonderful, and contains cottages modeled after the homes of significant American figures. Dearborn (and Hamtramck) are now predominantly Muslim, apparently for reasons that go back a century to Henry Ford's $5 wage. Dearborn felt noticeably prosperous (we stopped for coffee at a fancy Japanese cheesecake cafe); Hamtramck did not.

• https://t.co/OOkCI7DbAz says that the Hispanic population of Michigan is just 6%. Coming from California, the absence is very striking.

• The Detroit Institute of Arts is remarkable, particularly the room with the American landscapes and the section with the Dutch masters (especially The Visitation). An obvious question is why there is nothing quite like it in the Bay Area given how much richer the latter is than Detroit ever was -- we techies are just so uncultured by comparison. The Diego Rivera murals are amazing (and quite strange; you can see why they were controversial).

• Detroit is full of historic plaques -- they are truly everywhere. This is presumably due in part to the fact that Detroit has a lot of history, but it still has many more than places with comparable historical depth. Some research suggests that it might be related to generous tax credits for historic preservation. Whether or not that is true, Detroit persuades me that other places should engage in more plaquemaxxing.

• I recommend a visit! You overall leave with some sense for how exciting America must have felt in the early 20th century.

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

Medal just broke a run rate of 3 billion clips per year :) proud of the team!

[Highlight @tryhighlight]

Huge day at Highlight: We’ve raised $40M in Series A funding led by @khoslaventures. We’re also thrilled to welcome @SergeiSorokin as our new Co-Founder and CEO.

These changes will enable us to kill the coordination tax for teams. 🧵

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

Read this over the weekend (bonus if you read all the papers in the Research List) and you’ll be among the “very few who understand how far-reaching” the shift to World Models is.

https://t.co/DJnKX6ePc2

[Pim de Witte @PimDeWitte]

Packy and I spent the past month unpacking world models from first principles. This piece is the result of that exploration. We go into why, what, how, and look out into the future on the implications of our work.

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

There is a tremendous amount of progress happening in World Models.

Multiple labs have raised more than $1B. WMs were the star of GTC. They are a real path to embodied AI.

So @PimDeWitte & I wrote a comprehensive 19k word overview of World Models.

https://t.co/DJnKX6ePc2

[Matteo Franceschetti @m_franceschetti]

Today we're announcing a new round of funding that values @eightsleep at $1.5 billion, led by @tether Investments.

Ten years ago I started Eight Sleep with one conviction: the night is the most underutilized lever in human health. Almost nobody was engineering their sleep.

Last year, we hit free cash flow positivity, launched 3 new products, expanded to 34 countries, and published peer-reviewed studies showing the Pod reduces menopausal hot flashes by 56% and restores the body's natural circadian temperature rhythm during sleep, lowering core body temperature and improving cardiovascular recovery. A product you sleep on is producing clinical outcomes that rival pharmaceutical interventions.

We're now building a predictive AI agent trained on 1B+ hours of sleep data. It anticipates your night before it happens.

And we're advancing FDA filings for sleep apnea detection. Passive. Every night. No wires, no clinic visits.

The night is just the beginning.

[Vinod Khosla @vkhosla]

World models will be as important as LLM's. Next big market and General Intuition has the best data set for this...

[General Intuition @gen_intuition]

We’re hiring at General Intuition in NYC!

We recently announced a $133.7M seed round to build a new AI lab focused on world models and spatial-temporal reasoning.

In particular, we are building our data function here. If you know an amazing data / infrastructure engineer (or are one yourself), let’s talk!

DM any of us on the GI team - JDs below.

[Johnson @johnsonyyang]

@TurnerNovak Unapologetically @JetsPizza

[Agora @withAUSD]

We are thrilled to announce that Agora has raised a $50 million Series A round, led by @paradigm and with additional participation from @dragonfly_xyz. This milestone enables us to accelerate the development of Agora’s full-stack platform for stablecoin infrastructure, purpose-built to support the next generation of digital finance applications.

At Agora, our mission is to transform how money moves. We believe stablecoins will underpin a new financial fabric, one that is faster, more global, and more efficient than today’s siloed systems. That is why we are building AUSD and the Agora stack, a full service platform that makes issuing, managing, and integrating stablecoins seamless – whether you’re a developer, fintech, or institution. With AUSD, stablecoins become programmable, composable, and ubiquitous by default.

Over the past year, we’ve shipped the foundational elements for AUSD, including:
- Deep and robust onchain liquidity across 13 networks
- Native deployments across @arbitrum, @avax, @BNBCHAIN, @Coredao_Org, @ethereum, @Immutable, @injective, @katana, @Mantle_Official, @0xPolygon, @solana, and @SuiNetwork.
- Comprehensive integrations with exchanges and onramps
- Secure, scalable minting and redemption flows.
- Tens of billions in cumulative volume
- 50,000+ monthly active addresses

Dozens of customers like @nonco_otc, @flowdesk_co, @vaneck_us, @conduitxyz, @katana, @fslweb3, @plumenetwork already rely on Agora to power their stablecoin flows and infrastructure.

Announcing White-Labeled Stablecoins for All
Alongside our new partnership with Paradigm, we are entering the next chapter of Agora: deepening our connective tissue between both the onchain and fiat infrastructure layers.

Today, we are excited to formally announce the launch of our white-labeled stablecoin product – a turnkey solution that enables enterprises and teams to instantly issue their own branded stablecoin in days, not months. No need to manage complex infrastructure, secure banking relationships, liquidity, or build from scratch – Agora handles it all. We were long believers that to truly build a platform you needed to start with building the network.

Out of the box, partners get:
- Institutional-grade custodians and asset management
- Deep onchain liquidity
- A robust stablecoin dashboard, analytics, and control
- Forward thinking compliance architecture
- CEX and DEX integrations
- Local FX on and off ramps
- Zero fees when minting with USDC/T
- You control the rewards

Agora’s white-label product empowers businesses to rapidly innovate, bypass traditional product constraints, and deliver customized financial services to their users efficiently and transparently. This significant step not only demonstrates Agora’s ongoing commitment to pioneering programmable digital finance but also positions us at the heart of the future digital economy.

Learn more here: https://t.co/eLThHxNVtw.

Why Now
Stablecoins are no longer niche. They’ve become a foundational primitive for the future of finance and capital markets. But most companies still struggle to adopt them due to regulatory hurdles, technical gaps, and fragmented liquidity.

Agora exists to change that.

With the addition of Paradigm and Dragonfly’s continued support, Agora is building the infrastructure layer that abstracts away the complexity. We aim to foster an ecosystem where creating, managing, and integrating stablecoins becomes seamless so that every fintech, exchange, and enterprise can benefit from having its own stablecoin whether it be AUSD or newUSD – as a product feature, revenue growth lever, and strategic differentiator.

Reach out to learn more here: https://t.co/cYHW9tf72G.

[Vinay @vinaymenda]

🍵 🍵 🍵

[Katherine Boyle @KTmBoyle]

“Since it was created in 2018, the app has been downloaded more than 23 million times, in 150 countries. At last count, @HallowApp has guided more than 800 million prayers. The app has had high-profile endorsements from celebrities across the political spectrum, from Liam Neeson to Tucker Carlson, and it’s successful enough to have bought a Super Bowl advertisement last year.
Right now, 1.75 million users are engaged in Hallow’s “Pray40” challenge.

On the first day of Lent in 2025, Catholics across the Western world reported unusually high turnout at Ash Wednesday services.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” wrote Robert George, a professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, on @X. “Is something happening?””

Yes.

Congratulations to @alexathallow and the @HallowApp team.

[Ankur Jain @ankurjain_2]

You can read more at: https://t.co/cQFb5red04

[Ankur Jain @ankurjain_2]

--What's Next for Bilt --

As we wrap up what has been a transformational 2024, I wanted to share a preview of what's ahead for Bilt Rewards in 2025 and answer one of the most common questions I hear from members: How does Bilt's business work, and how are we able to provide such valuable rewards and benefits?

While our award-winning cobrand credit card has received much attention, it remains just one part of our business. Bilt's foundation is actually built on three robust and interconnected businesses that together form the largest housing rewards platform in the country.

Through our platform, you can earn rewards on rent payments regardless of how you pay - whether by bank account, debit card, or credit card. You get access to exclusive neighborhood benefits and can now earn rewards at every step of your housing journey, from signing a new lease to buying your first home.

I'm excited to walk you through each of these businesses and show you how we're working to create more value on your biggest everyday expenses in the year ahead.

[Dominic Zvada @dominic_zvada]

#GoBlue

[J.J. McCarthy @jjmccarthy09]

Gosh I love my annual Thanksgiving weekend traditions! 😁

GO FU**ING BLUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!