đ Looking to drop some cash? Christieâs kicked off its online AI auction last week with 34 pieces. The most expensive artwork is expected to be Alexander Rebenâs âUntitled Robot Painting,â a blank canvas that gets painted by an AI-powered robot every time someone bids on it. Christieâs estimates the piece could go for up to $1.7m.
đ§ On the pod:RIP, Humane AI Pin. We hardly knew ye.
NEWS FLASH
đ¸ Bye bye, bitcoin: Dubaiâs Bybit crypto exchange is out $1.5B after the largest digital theft in history. The platform has 60m+ global users and is the worldâs second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Hackers gained control of an ethereum wallet on the platform and transferred its contents to an unknown address. While Bybit is telling customers their holdings are safe â and that those affected will be refunded â the company has already received 350k+ requests to withdraw funds.See, this (and only this) is exactly why we didnât invest our billions in crypto.
đŁ Cheep, not cheap: With egg prices up 15%+ YoY, chicken hatcheries say theyâre seeing a spike in people who want to buy chickens, with one company citing a 50% increase in sales every week. That said, buying or renting a hen doesnât guarantee easy breakfasts. Author Kathy Shea Mormino, AKA the âchicken chick,â told CBS News that chickens arenât âjust PEZ dispensersâ for eggs and require consistent care. Plus, assuming you live somewhere where itâs legal to keep chickens, costs including a coop and feed could total in the thousands. Youâll also likely need more than one chicken â the average healthy hen lays up to just five eggs per week.
đ Coming to a shelf near you: bananas that continually live on a shelf. Biotech startup Tropic will take its nonbrowning, gene-edited bananas to market in March. The UK-based firm says its debut product tastes the same and is no riper than your average banana; its longer timeline for browning after peeling just makes it more palatable to include in precut fruit salads. Tropicâs second product, coming later this year, is a banana with âat least 10 extra daysâ of shelf life before turning to mush, which would be a boon for supermarkets â and an absolute nightmare scenario for banana bread enthusiasts.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Staying power: There are currently more hotels under construction than ever before, with more than 2.4m rooms in the global pipeline. At least one of those rooms is bound to get the water pressure right.
Nightmare fuel: Polish startup Clone Robotics posted a video on X of Protoclone, âthe worldâs first bipedal, musculoskeletal android.â The startup says the robot has synthetic organ systems and âwill bleed outâ if stabbed with a fork.
We are never doing as well as Warren Buffett, and today is no exception. Berkshire Hathaway reported a Q4 operating profit of $14.5B, a 71% increase. The surge was fueled by 302% growth in insurance underwriting from the year prior.
YOUR NEXT STARTUP
Promising, profit-rich niches
Make great 1:1 AI apps: The micro-SaaS gold rush is real. Build tools that solve specific problems.
How to find your folks: Friend events. Fitness groups. Fancy little shindigs. People crave connection, and it shows.
Menâs holistic health: Believe it or not, dudes be groominâ. Many are also shelling out for hair loss, hormones, and integrative wellness services.
The autonomous tech revolution: Self-driving cars are just a taste. What about homes and public spaces?
âKidultsâ + older entrepreneurs: Because adults are just big kids with bills, trinkets, interests, and dreams.
Research data and startup ideas inside. Motivated genes sold separately.
Glowing bunnies and real-life unicorns: Biohacking is coming for our pets
While little kids are simply daydreaming of having a pet unicorn, one startup is actually putting in the legwork to make it a reality.
The Los Angeles Project is using Crispr gene-editing technology to make our pets a little more interesting â weâre talking glow-in-the-dark bunnies, hypoallergenic cats, and, yes, literal unicorns â perWired.
If glowing pets sound off the rails, it might help to put co-founder Josie Zaynerâs resume in context: The biohacker livestreamed injecting herself with Crispr gene-editing tech and has given herself a DIY covid vaccine and a fecal transplant.
The startup, which Zayner told Wired is about making pets âmore complex and interesting and beautiful and unique,â has begun work in stealth:
Itâs experimenting with embryos from rabbits, hamsters, fish, and frogs, using Crispr to delete and insert genes.
Itâs testing restriction enzyme mediated integration (REMI), a technique for introducing new DNA to embryos.
It added a gene to rabbit embryos to make them produce GFP, a fluorescent protein. If the embryos are successfully transferred into a female rabbit, a litter of glowing bunnies will soon be born.
Once the rabbits get glowing, the team will start on cats that donât have Fel d1, the protein that causes most cat allergies. Hallelujah.
Tweaking species isnât newâŚ
⌠Humans have been selectively breeding animals for thousands of years.
GloFish â fish genetically modified with the GFP protein â are already sold in pet stores across the US.
Yorktown Technologies, which developed the fish, sold the company for $50m in 2017.
But some of the fish have escaped from farms in Brazil and are reproducing in creeks in the Atlantic Forest, which could threaten native species.
While Zayner says the startupâs animals would be spayed and neutered to avoid accidental reproduction, playing God undoubtedly raises a whole lot of ethical questions. As does using Crispr tech for somewhat superficial, commercial purposes.
Our big question: Can our hypoallergenic kitten have a unicorn horn?
Two unicorns, an IPO, and 10.8x multiples: How a VC founder and CEO is redefining speed scaling.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
The price tag on Chinese tech company Huaweiâs trifolding phone, Mate XT, when it becomes available to markets beyond China. A press release suggests using a single screen for quick tasks, like snapping a pic or making a call, and the double screen for reading articles. But if you want to multitask, then go ahead and unfold all three screens to enjoy 10.2 inches of display.
Though Huawei â which makes a broad variety of tech products â has struggled due to US sanctions that cut it off from advanced semiconductors and Googleâs operating system, it holds 17% of the smartphone market share in China and saw revenue increase 22% in 2024.
AROUND THE WEB
đ On this day: In 1988, SCOTUS decided in favor of the magazine Hustlerâs parody of Rev. Jerry Falwell, ruling that parody was protected by the First Amendment.
đď¸ Newsletter:Start your day with AI Breakfast â the latest developments in the world of artificial intelligence, explained.
So says singer John Mayer, who reportedly inspired Dude Wipesâ newest product â Double Deuce, a twofer version of its signature wipes â after DMing the above truth to the menâs flushables brand on Instagram. The 14-year-old company, a âShark Tankâ alum that now sees $200m in sales and wipes â1.5 billion buttsâ every year, told WSJ it will be sending Mayer âa bunchâ of the new wipes when they launch in May.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Your bite force is stronger when youâre upside down.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben âPreordered a glowing kittenâ Berkley.
