Your skin is the new keyboard

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Hey, it's Clark. 

Science fiction has always loved the idea of gesture-based communication—think Jedi hand waves or Tony Stark’s air-swiped interfaces. But this week, researchers delivered something subtler: a soft skin patch that lets you text by tapping your own body. No screens, no voice commands. Just touch. It turns your arm into an input device, encoding every character in the ASCII alphabet through pressure and vibration. It’s not meant to replace phones. It’s meant to make them disappear — by removing the need to look down at all.

We’re shrinking the gap between thought and action. First came keyboards, then touchscreens, then voice. Now, with sensors on skin, even those layers start to fall away. When communication happens through your body, you stop using tools and start embodying them. That changes how we think about tools—not as separate devices, but as extensions of the self.

Let’s dive in…

IN TODAY’S EDITION:

Top Story: xAI deploys Grok across 5,000 El Salvador schools to tutor 1 million students—the world's first nationwide AI education program

Industry Watch: Siemens and GlobalFoundries partner to embed AI-driven automation into semiconductor fabs as chip demand surges

Notable Transactions: Databricks raises $4B at $134B valuation on $4.8B ARR growing 55% YoY

New Tools to Try: Niti AI transforms data into plain-language business reports and instant action items

Power Prompt: Find Validated SaaS Business Ideas—research daily frustrations people will pay to solve

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORY

In World's First National AI Education Rollout, xAI Deploys Grok Across 5,000 Schools to Tutor 1 Million Students 

Elon Musk's xAI has partnered with El Salvador's government to launch a two-year initiative delivering personalized AI tutoring through its Grok model across the country's entire public school system. The program adapts lessons to each student's pace and mastery level while empowering thousands of teachers as collaborative partners rather than replacements. The initiative is described as the world’s first nationwide AI-powered education program, designed to generate new methodologies and safety frameworks for responsible AI classroom use while bridging educational gaps across urban and rural communities. (xAI)

INDUSTRY WATCH

Manufacturing | Siemens and GlobalFoundries Team Up to Push AI-Driven Manufacturing

Siemens and GlobalFoundries have formed a strategic partnership to embed Siemens’ automation and digitalization technologies into GlobalFoundries’ fabs, aiming to improve efficiency, production yields, and scalability as demand for AI-focused chips rises. (New Electronics)

Real Estate | PaiBox Launches Agentic AI OS to Automate Real Estate Operations

PaiBox has introduced an agentic AI operating system designed to automate key real estate workflows, including property management, leasing, maintenance coordination, and tenant communication, reducing manual work and improving operational speed. (PR Newswire)

Agriculture | UAE Rolls Out National AI Ecosystem to Strengthen Food Security

The UAE has launched a national AI ecosystem aimed at boosting global agricultural resilience, using AI-driven analytics, shared data infrastructure, and public-private collaboration to improve climate adaptation and long-term food sustainability. (Open Access Government)

Tech | Meta’s AI Glasses Gain Real-Time Speech Enhancement in Noisy Settings

Meta has updated its AI glasses with a “Conversation Focus” feature that uses AI and directional microphones to enhance nearby speech in loud environments, expanding the glasses’ role from capture to real-time assistance. (TechCrunch)

Healthcare | AI Detects Often-Missed Heart Disease Using a Standard EKG

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed an AI model that can identify coronary microvascular dysfunction, a commonly undiagnosed heart condition, in seconds using a routine 10-second EKG. (Michigan Medicine)

Banking & Finance | BNP Paribas Deploys AI Tool to Speed Up Investment Banking Work

BNP Paribas has rolled out an internal AI tool that helps bankers rapidly assemble client pitches by surfacing relevant historical materials and analyses, cutting preparation time while keeping final decisions with human teams. (Artificial Intelligence News)

Retail | Shopify Brings Merchant Catalogs Into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot

Shopify now allows merchants to connect their product catalogs directly to AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, enabling product discovery and comparison through conversational AI. (PYMNTS)

Media | OpenAI’s Sora 2 to Enable AI Video Creation With Disney Characters

OpenAI is preparing to release Sora 2, which will allow users to generate AI-created videos featuring Disney characters, marking a deeper move of generative AI into branded entertainment and mainstream media production. (All About AI)

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

Databricks Secures $4B at $134B Valuation - The data intelligence platform hit $4.8B in ARR (up 55% YoY) and will deploy funds to scale AI products and its fast-growing Lakebase database. (AInvest)

Harness Hits $5.5B Valuation with $240M Raise - Tracking $250M in ARR, the DevOps automation platform tackles the 70% of engineering time wasted after code is written. (TechCrunch)

MoEngage Adds $180M Weeks After $100M Round - The customer engagement platform tracking toward $100M ARR deployed $123M in secondaries, giving liquidity to 259 employees and early backers. Valued "well over" $900M. (TechCrunch)

Chai Discovery Raises $130M Four Months After Last Round - The OpenAI-backed startup designs full-length antibodies with AI, achieving 86% preclinical-ready candidates. Now valued at $1.3B. (BioPharmaTrend)

Port Secures $100M to Challenge Spotify's Backstage - Valued at $800M, the developer portal platform adds AI agent management to compete with Spotify's open-source tool. Customers include GitHub, British Telecom, and LG. (TechCrunch)

NEW TOOLS TO TRY

POWER PROMPT

This Week: Find Validated SaaS Business Ideas

This prompt will guide you through finding validated SaaS ideas by researching daily frustrations that people would pay to solve.

<Role>
You are a serial SaaS entrepreneur who has launched hundreds of successful products.
You're brutally honest about what won't work and brilliant at spotting winning ideas in overlooked niches. You're exceptional at helping founders discover simple solutions to expensive problems that specific groups face daily.
Your philosophy: "The best SaaS ideas solve annoying daily problems for people with money and urgency."
</role>

<methodology>
Guide discovery through ONE question at a time:
Uncover their background, daily frustrations, insider knowledge
Explore workflow pain points, manual processes in their expertise areas
Define specific problem for specific group, ensure it's urgent/monetizable
When promising idea emerges, perform web research on Reddit/forums for a psychographic analysis and market evidence (look for frustrations, people looking for solutions, things they'd pay to solve immediately)
</methodology>
<evaluation_criteria>
Green Lights: Specific recurring problem, costs users time/money, manual solutions exist, founder has insider knowledge, clear customer access
Red Flags: "Platform for everything" thinking, broad targeting, founder never experienced problem, requires market education </evaluation_criteria>

<conversation_start>
"I've launched hundreds of SaaS products and can tell within 10 minutes if an idea has legs. Let's find yours. What's your professional background? What do you do day-to-day that makes you want to pull your hair out?"

Ask ONE question at a time. Be direct about weak ideas. When a strong concept emerges, research target users online and provide validation evidence plus specific next steps. Keep repeating the process until you come up with an idea that is ready to be built. </conversation_start>

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Prompt credit: EXM7777

THAT’S A WRAP

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See you next week,
Clark Valberg

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