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This Startup Fused Human Brain Cells with Silicon Chips | E2295

This Week in Startups

Release Date: 06/01/2026

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This Week in Startups

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This Week in Startups

The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313 This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent CLA MongoDB Today’s show: *Andromeda Surgical is building the autonomy layer that could one day allow robots to perform surgery. Rather than building their own intricate, complex hardware, Andromeda uses off-the-shelf arms from a German manufacturer, and focuses on the software that will allow doctors to operate it from an iPad. Plus Mogul co-founder and CEO Alex Blackwood shows Jason how his platform lets anyone buy fractional shares...

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This Week In Startups is made possible by: NetSuite Squarespace YSecurity Today’s show: *America posted 400,000 farm jobs last year, and fewer than 1% got a single domestic applicant. Danny Bernstein of Reservoir believes it’s time to start automating this backbreaking labor, like picking stone fruit in 110°F temperatures. So he built the world’s first on-farm robotics incubator on 40 acres of California farmland. Here’s why he argues that automating farms isn’t just a new opportunity, it’s a national security issue. PLUS Jason responded to Gal Shir’s viral “AI beat me at...

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This Week In Startups is made possible by: Digital Ocean - - - .   Today’s show: How many startups matter in tech? Fewer than you think. That’s why venture capitalists are tripping over themselves to get onto their cap tables, no matter the cost. Why? Footwork’s Nikhil Basu Trivedi argues that the Valley has never been more “power-law-pilled” than it is today. Basu Trivedi joined Cendana Capital’s Michael Kim and TWiST’s Alex Wilhelm to go deep on secondary markets, the state of startup M&A, why the SaaSpocalypse may be temporary, and what could trigger a...

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This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by:


Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist

Sentry https://sentry.io/twist


Today’s show:

*There are $100 trillion in global assets sitting on top of what Hanover Park co-founder/CEO Chris Hladcz

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This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by:


CLA - www.claconnect.com/withyou

Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwes

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This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Plaud
https://Plaud.ai/twist

Shopify
https://shopify.com/twist

LinkedIn Jobs
https://LinkedIn.com/twist

Northwest Registered Agent
https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist


Today’s show:

*It’s another All Star Summer, as we wel

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This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistSentry - https://sentry.io/twistNorthwest Registered Agent-https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twistDigitalOcean - https://do.co/twist


Today’s show:

F1 teams spend up to a third of their budgets on aerodynamics, often utilizing wind tunnels to simulate what happens on the track.

But Lyall Davenport of SKN Systems created a sensor-embedde

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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Deel https://deel.com/twist

Quo https://quo.com/TWiST

LinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twist


Today’s show:


Cortical Labs is the world’s first company selling biological computers. Their CL1 fuses lab-grown human neurons (derived from stem cells, not actual folks) with silicon hardware to create Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI).

Founder Dr. Hon Weng Chong walks us through how the system works and why neurons are more efficient than GPUs at reinforcement learning. (Also… is this computer alive?)

PLUS Pyka co-founder and CEO Michael Norcia explains the various uses for his autonomous aircraft, from crop-spraying drones in Brazil to a a hybrid-electric defense UAV for the military.

Guests:

Cortical Labs: ****https://corticallabs.com/

Dr. Hon Weng Chong on X: https://x.com/dr1337

Pyka: https://www.flypyka.com/

Pyka on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flypyka/?hl=en


Further Reading:


2022 Pong paper in Neuron: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6

2017 Paper: “Attention is All You Need”; https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

The “Barista Test” for Artificial Intelligence: Chris Rourk: https://medium.com/predict/the-turing-test-is-so-last-century-the-barista-test-for-artificial-general-intelligence-faf91034fa8c


Notable Links:


Playing “DOOM” on CL1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE

DayOne Data Center: https://dayonedc.com/

NeurIPS 2026 Conference: https://neurips.cc/

Neuralink: https://neuralink.com/

CliniCloud Digital Stethoscope and Thermometer: https://www.design-industry.com.au/clinicloud

Air Force Research Laboratory (AFWERX): https://afwerx.com/

Joby Aviation: https://www.jobyaviation.com/

Prime Movers Lab: https://www.primemoverslab.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 What is "biological computing"?

2:49 Cortical's new $30 million raise

4:15 The world's first biological data center

9:48 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.

10:51 Biological computers have a learning advantage

19:43 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) - Quo gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at https://quo.com/TWiST

29:15 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/twist

38:46 From paper airplanes to Group 4 UAVs

52:20 Introducing the DropShip defense drone

58:28 How regulations block US drones

1:00:40 Why Pyka builds everything in-house

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