FROM THE DESK OF
Clark Valberg
MANAGING PARTNER
The most famous demo in tech history was Steve Jobs holding up a phone. This week, a founder earned the comparison to him while holding up nothing at all.
Farza Majeed, the founder of Clicky, posted a viral demo of himself running his Mac entirely by voice: opening apps, navigating windows, executing tasks, with his hands never touching the keyboard. Built on GPT-Realtime 2.0, the clip pulled nearly 3.5 million views in days. Clicky, a screen-aware voice assistant backed by Y Combinator, did what good demos do: it made the next decade of computing legible in 30 seconds.
Voice control has been promised since Siri arrived in 2011, and it stalled for one reason: assistants could transcribe words but could not operate software. Real-time models close that gap. The AI sees the screen, holds context, and acts the moment intent is spoken. A computer you operate by voice doesn't need to be in front of you, and that single fact throws open what hardware can now become.
"The next billion-dollar software companies will ship products with nothing to click."
/ THE DEEP DIVE
Free Home Cleanings Hit NYC, Paid for by Selling Head-Camera Footage to Robot Makers
German startup MicroAGI's Shift app sends vetted cleaners into New York homes at zero cost to the customer, with each cleaner wearing a point-of-view camera co-founder Bercan Kilic calls a "magic hat." The roughly two-hour recordings are sold to AI labs and used in Shift's own research, footage valuable enough that the company covers the entire cleaning bill and still profits. Shift already pays workers worldwide $20 an hour to film everyday chores, distributing over $5 million in Q1, and GM Harry Kilberg says the free offer drew thousands of bookings, with London, Munich, and Zurich next.
SOURCE: SHIFT ON X
BUSINESS IMPACT:
Robotics & AI Labs:
First-person household footage gives embodied-AI developers the real-world training data the internet can't supply, accelerating home robot development.
Home Services Industry:
Free, data-subsidized cleaning undercuts paid providers on price while quietly training the automation that could replace their workforce.
Gig Economy Platforms:
Paying workers for task data rather than task completion creates a new labor category, pressuring platforms like DoorDash to monetize the footage their workers generate.
/ INDUSTRY WATCH
MANUFACTURING
NVIDIA's New Factory Agent Cuts Foxconn's Root-Cause Analysis Time by 80%
NVIDIA's Factory Operations Blueprint puts one AI agent in charge of an entire plant, reading live machine data and directing fleets of specialized agents. Foxconn also projects 15% higher labor productivity and 10% fewer machine failures.
SRC: NVIDIA
REAL ESTATE
Realtor and Google Build Home Search That Tests Your Commute Before You Tour
Realtor's new RealAssist AI, powered by Google Maps AI, lets buyers search by conversation, compare homes and neighborhoods side by side, and check whether a property fits their daily routine.
SRC: REAL ESTATE NEWS
AGRICULTURE
Kubota Keeps Farm Robots Running Across the 40% of Japan Too Hilly for Signal
Kubota, NTT and DOCOMO demonstrated a system that switches between mobile and satellite links to hold steady video for remote farm robots when terrain kills the signal, prioritizing the machine's path and crop rows. It clears a key barrier to deploying robots across most of Japan's farmland.
SRC: IGROW NEWS
TECH
Meta Bets on a Business AI Agent to Break Its 98% Reliance on Ads
Meta's new Business Agent answers customer questions, recommends products and books appointments across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. Bundled into Meta One with usage-based pricing for large WhatsApp users, it's Zuckerberg's latest push to build revenue beyond advertising.
SRC: CNBC
HEALTHCARE
One Blood Draw Separates Four Dementia Diseases at 92.3% Accuracy
A Washington University AI tool reads 15 blood proteins to tell Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, frontotemporal dementia and Lewy body dementia apart from healthy aging. Trained on 3,200+ patients, it also catches when several diseases strike at once, which existing tests miss.
SRC: MEDICAL XPRESS
BANKING & FINANCE
Robinhood Hands Your AI Agent the Keys to Trade and Spend
Robinhood now lets customers connect outside AI agents to dedicated trading and credit card accounts that buy and trade autonomously. Guardrails include isolated funds, spending limits, per-purchase approvals and one-tap shutoff.
SRC: ROBINHOOD
RETAIL
Google's Universal Cart Lets Shoppers Buy Across Nike, Target and Walmart From One Basket
Google's cross-retailer cart pulls items from Search, Gemini, Gmail and YouTube, then hunts discounts, tracks price history and flags restocks. Nike, Sephora, Target, Walmart, Ulta and Wayfair are first to integrate.
SRC: RETAIL DIVE
MEDIA
InMobi Predicts AI Agents Will Route 80% of Ad Spend Within Two Years
InMobi and Scope3 launched a sell-side AI agent that sells InMobi's Glance inventory across 300 million devices, skipping programmatic auctions entirely. InMobi expects a few hundred agent-to-agent deals a day by the end of 2026.
SRC: ADWEEK
/ NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS
$65B
Anthropic Closes $65 Billion Round at $965 Billion Valuation
The Claude maker's likely final private raise, co-led by Altimeter, Sequoia, and Coatue, comes with run-rate revenue past $47 billion and its first profitable quarter in sight.
VIA TECHCRUNCH
$500M
Impulse Space Raises $500 Million to Move Cargo Around in Orbit
Founded by SpaceX's first employee, Tom Mueller, the company builds spacecraft that ferry payloads between orbits, with total funding now past $1 billion.
VIA SPACE.COM
$400M
Suno Raises $400 Million, More Than Doubling Its Valuation in Six Months
The text-to-song platform, now valued at $5.4 billion with over 2 million paying subscribers, drew Bond Capital as the lead alongside various artists and producers.
VIA THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
$200M
Coralogix Raises $200 Million
The system-monitoring company, valued at $1.6 billion and serving 5,000+ customers, including IBM, grew revenue roughly 60% since its last round.
VIA CTECH
$135M
XCENA Raises $135 Million to Break AI's Memory Bottleneck
Founded by Samsung and SK Hynix veterans, the $570 million chip startup processes data in memory rather than moving it to processors.
VIA BUSINESSWIRE
/ EMERGING TOOLS
01
MacOS app that writes, edits, and automates tasks across any app by voice — no typing required.
02
Record a browser workflow once; Minded turns it into an AI agent that runs it 24/7 without code. Record a browser workflow once; Minded turns it into an AI agent that runs it 24/7 without code.
03
Type what you want automated in plain English; Twin builds and runs the browser agent for you.
04
Slack-native AI agent that connects to your business tools to answer questions, automate workflows, and surface decisions faster.
05
An AI assistant inside Gmail and Outlook that triages your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and syncs everything to your CRM automatically.
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