This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Northwest Registered Agent - https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

NetSuite - https://www.netsuite.ai/twist

Check out a full transcript and summary of today's show, created by Plaud: https://web.plaud.ai/s/pub_c2b45bfe-abad-43ce-b7ef-41118f55f738::Vo2MH6PuXBzTCaxKRDjHH0zu8FbzgDpQL5OnfBfMzLP22CQRxciqE74Mq4YDD-LwYXGZCazgIeglPuwC

Today's show:

An Anthropic researcher quit this week, saying both leading labs are gambling with everyone's lives. His coworker chimed in and predicts there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will end humanity IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. Jason and Lon take it to Yohei Nakajima of Untapped Capital, Ben Lerer of Lerer Hippeau, and Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Prime, who cannot decide whether it is the greatest PR strategy in history or some kind of mass psychosis.

Learn why Jason says founders should never hand a frontier lab their proprietary data, whether or not they're offered free credits. PLUS, who really solved Navier-Stokes, and what does the OpenAI–Buckmaster fight mean for anyone doing real work inside ChatGPT or Claude?

Guests:

Yohei Nakajima on X: https://x.com/yoheinakajima

Untapped Capital: https://untapped.vc/

Ben Lerer on X: https://x.com/BenjLerer

Lerer Hippeau: https://www.lererhippeau.com/

Rebecca Lynn on X: https://x.com/VCRebecca

Canvas Prime: https://www.canvas.vc/

Relevant Links:

Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic - "gambling with our lives" https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/gambling-with-our-lives-anthropic-researcher-quits-warns-against-self-improving-ai/

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's Alignment Science lead, on X: >10% odds within a decade — https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126

Future of Life Institute — the 2015 Puerto Rico AI safety conference Jason asks Lon to pull up → https://futureoflife.org/

Meta debuts Muse (Axios) —https://www.axios.com/2026/09/08/meta-debuts-muse-personal-ai-agent

Harmonic — https://harmonic.ai/

China blocks Meta's Manus acquisition (CNBC) —https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/27/meta-manus-china-blocks-acquisition-ai-startup.html

OpenAI fought dirty— https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/

Savvy Wealth — https://www.wealthmanagement.com/ria-news/savvy-wealth-raises-100m-valuation-hits-600m

Augmodo — https://www.augmodo.com/

E2B — https://e2b.dev/

Daptic — https://www.daptic.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic: "crunch time" and "endgame"

4:53 Evan Hubinger: >10% odds AI kills all humans in a decade

11:22 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

12:23 "You have succeeded in scaring the bejesus out of Americans"

14:59 Jobs, the wealth divide, and which industries get wiped out first

20:07 NetSuite - For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST

21:09 Savvy Wealth's $100M round

26:52 The Kalanick story and why Jason built a syndicate backstop

29:04 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist

32:05 Meta ships Muse

32:56 Can Meta be trusted

35:29 Threads Metrics

49:27 Robinhood's free-share referral

51:16 NYU's Tristan Buckmaster accuses OpenAI of fighting dirty on Navier-Stokes

57:43 Jason: "It's a trap"

59:03 Harvey goes open-weight, Go.AI on-prem, Covenant Labs

1:12:22 High performing portfolio companies

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 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