This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twistPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist

Today’s show:

Anthropic stabbed Cursor in the back. Then SpaceX swooped in with $60 billion. Today, TWiST connects the dots on the biggest deal in AI since the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, and why it's a warning sign for every startup building on top of a frontier model. Jason is joined by Bling Capital’s Ben Ling, Banana Capital’s Turner Novak, and co-host Alex to go deep on the future of coding models, the current golden age of venture liquidity, OpenAI’s financials, and the ‘Four Ds’ of venture investing. The show closes with a tribute to Josh Baer, the founder of Capital Factory.

Guest Links:

Ben Ling https://x.com/bling0?lang=en

Bling Capital https://www.blingcap.com/

Turner Novak https://x.com/TurnerNovak

Banana Capital https://www.bananacapital.vc/

Show Links:

Hanover Park https://www.hanoverpark.com/

SpaceX buys Cursor https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisition-ipo.html

Cursor Composer 2.5 https://cursor.com/blog/composer-2-5

OpenAI financials source https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

AMD’s new deskside data center https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/ryzen-ai-halo.html

Perplexity Model Council https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-model-council

Timestamps:

0:00 Guest introductions

1:15 Guest introductions

2:43 SpaceX acquires Cursor for $60B

6:13 The golden era of M&A

9:13 Northwest Registered Agent: Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

12:04 Cursor's negative gross margins & the compute problem

13:22 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

15:04 Rolling your own model: When does it make sense?

19:35 LinkedIn: Thanks to our partners at LinkedIn! Post your job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist then promote it to get access to LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant.

22:53 The "headless product" thesis

28:31 Deel: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.

34:22 OpenAI financials leaked: $13B revenue, $38.5B net loss

40:13 Where does AI value accumulate?

45:34 Portfolio Spotlight: Hanover Park

48:37 Seed stage graduation rates have fallen from 50% to 25%

54:59 The four Ds of venture: Deal flow, Decisions, Doubling down, Distributions

1:06:36 How to find 'undiscovered gems'

1:30:59 Snap Specs AR glasses: $2,195, and a bit chunky

1:39:29 Tribute to Joshua Baer, Capital Factory's founder

Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com

Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

X: https://x.com/lons

Follow Alex:

X: https://x.com/alex

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com