FROM THE DESK OF
Clark Valberg
MANAGING PARTNER

The Super Bowl turned into a Mad Men episode for AI, and the real product on screen was trust.

Super Bowl LX made something unmistakable. AI companies have moved from developer conferences to the largest consumer stage in the world. Anthropic debuted with a not-so-subtle dig at OpenAI critiquing advertising inside AI systems, a message that quickly escalated into a public feud with Sam Altman. Meta promoted AI glasses as everyday companions. Amazon’s Alexa+ tries to ‘kill’ Chris Hemsworth. Google positioned Gemini as ambient intelligence. Around them, a cluster of AI-native startups claimed their share of airtime. The category is no longer introducing itself. It is competing for default status.

The shift from selling features to selling presence marks a structural turn. AI companies are now competing for the same mental real estate as banks and household brands. Super Bowl budgets reflect a new priority. Adoption over capability. Ubiquity over benchmarks. The decisive factor will not be model performance. It will be which system people instinctively reach for when ordinary decisions need support.

“Consumer trust in AI will be built through cultural embedding, not through technical superiority alone.”

/ THE DEEP DIVE

AI Takes the Wheel: FINQ Debuts First U.S. ETFs Run Entirely by AI

The Israeli fund manager secured regulatory approval for AIUP and AINT, two large-cap equity funds where its AI framework ranks all S&P 500 stocks daily using market, financial and textual data—then autonomously builds portfolio holdings and weightings with human involvement limited to oversight and governance. AIUP takes long positions in top-ranked stocks, while AINT balances long positions in top performers with short positions in bottom-ranked names. CEO Eldad Tamir positions the approach as superior to human decision-making because the system processes immense data volumes without fear, greed or urgency biases.

SOURCE: PYMNTS

BUSINESS IMPACT:

Traditional Asset Managers:
Fully automated stock selection raises pressure on active fund managers to prove the value of human decision-making.

ETF Market:
AI-managed portfolios introduce a new category of funds, intensifying competition among providers seeking technology-led differentiation.

Regulatory Landscape:
Federal approval of AI-run ETFs signals growing acceptance of machine-driven investing, setting precedent for broader automation across financial products.

/ INDUSTRY WATCH

MANUFACTURING

Destro AI's Central Brain Orchestrates Mixed Robot Fleets in Real-Time

Destro AI launched its Agentic AI Brain—a centralized controller coordinating humanoids, AMRs, and autonomous forklifts as one adaptive workforce. The platform eliminates siloed robot intelligence, dynamically reassigning tasks as conditions change and turning fragmented warehouse automation into intelligent operations at scale.

SRC: THE ROBOT REPORT

REAL ESTATE

Property AI Cuts Investment Research from Weeks to Minutes

HTAG launched first vertically integrated AI copilot for real estate, combining decades of proprietary market data with predictive analytics. The platform delivers portfolio analysis in minutes versus the 2-4 weeks traditional research requires, using historical trends spanning ten years unavailable to generalist models.

SRC: EIN PRESSWIRE

AGRICULTURE

Autonomous Drones Slash Livestock Monitoring Time by 75% on Remote Farms

Drone-Hand's AI system cuts routine livestock checks from hours to minutes while operating offline across million-hectare farms. The platform autonomously identifies livestock and monitors infrastructure.

SRC: AGFUNDER NEWS

TECH

NVIDIA Trains Robots on 44,000 Hours of Human Video

NVIDIA released DreamDojo, which teaches robots physical tasks by watching 44,000 hours of first-person human video—the largest robot training dataset to date. The system learns general physics from human demonstrations then adapts to specific hardware, slashing traditional training costs.

HEALTHCARE

AI Predicts Brain Age and Cancer Survival from MRI Scans

Mass General Brigham's BrainIAC analyzes unlabeled brain MRIs to predict brain age, dementia risk, tumor mutations, and cancer survival. Trained on 48,965 scans using self-supervised learning, the model outperforms task-specific AI when training data is scarce.

BANKING & FINANCE

Goldman Embeds Anthropic Engineers to Automate Trade Accounting

Goldman Sachs spent six months embedding Anthropic engineers to build AI agents automating trade reconciliation and client vetting. Claude's reasoning handles complex compliance tasks requiring document parsing and regulatory interpretation—functions currently employing thousands across accounting and compliance.

SRC: CNBC

RETAIL

Visa and Akamai Launch AI Shopping Bot Authentication

Visa and Akamai deployed a trust protocol for AI shopping agents after commerce logged 25 billion AI bot requests in two months—a 300% surge. The system verifies both agents and the humans behind them, enabling 175 million Visa merchants to distinguish legitimate assistants from malicious bots.

MEDIA

Amazon Launches Marketplace for Publishers to License Content to AI Firms

Amazon is building an AWS marketplace where publishers sell content licenses directly to AI developers, competing with Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace. The platform enables usage-based compensation scaling with AI system access frequency—creating revenue streams as traditional advertising collapses.

/ NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

$20B

Anthropic Closes In on $20 Billion Round at $350 Billion Valuation

The Claude AI maker doubled its funding target from $10 billion following overwhelming investor demand, with the round expected to close within days just five months after raising $13 billion.
VIA PYMNTS

$315M

Runway Raises $315 Million at $5.3 Billion Valuation

The AI video startup secured funding led by General Atlantic with Nvidia and Adobe participating, pivoting from entertainment video generation toward models that simulate physical environments for medicine, robotics, and climate.
VIA TECHCRUNCH

$275M

Nebius Acquires AI Search Startup Tavily for $275 Million

The cloud infrastructure company purchased the Israeli startup to add real-time web search for AI agents, with the deal potentially reaching $400 million upon hitting performance targets.
VIA BLOOMBERG

$255M

Fundamental Emerges with $255 Million at $1.2 Billion Valuation

The DeepMind alumni-founded startup launched its model to analyze massive spreadsheet datasets that current AI systems can't handle, already securing multimillion-dollar contracts with Fortune 100 clients.
VIA TECHCRUNCH

$230M

Positron Raises $230 Million at $1 Billion Valuation

The semiconductor startup backed by Qatar Investment Authority claims its upcoming chip will deliver five times better energy efficiency and six times more memory than Nvidia's next-generation offering.
VIA TECHCRUNCH

/ EMERGING TOOLS

01

Create and schedule LinkedIn content to build your professional brand and maintain consistent visibility with your network.

02

Monitor competitors and get automated summaries of market changes so you stay ahead of industry shifts.

03

Validate startup ideas with market data before investing time and resources into building.

04

Build and deploy decision logic workflows that automate complex business rules without writing code.

05

Automate repetitive tasks with AI agents and workflows to free up time for strategic work.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

TRANSFORMATIVE STUDIO

We partner with deeply embedded operators to discover, design, and spin out AI-native companies that transform industries.

"We’re heading toward a world where AI makes the “how” trivial, which means businesses will live or die on their “why”."

See you next week,

Clark Valberg

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