Tech and Startups 28-10-2025
OpenAI's new browser, Google's AI Studio updates, Uniphore's major funding and much more!
đź“Ł Headlines
• OpenAI released the Atlas browser, a ChatGPT-centric browser with agent mode for paid users, though early tests say its purpose is unclear review.
• Google rolled out AI Studio updates adding "vibe coding" with natural prompts, secret variables, UI editing, and one-click Cloud Run deploy.
• Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore secured $260M in new funding from Nvidia, Snowflake, Databricks, AMD and others to scale its Business AI Cloud.
• Anchor raised a $6M seed to launch a cloud-based agentic browser automation platform (b0.dev) with planning-first execution.
• Rondo Energy turned on the world’s largest thermal battery, a 100 MWh heat storage system for industrial steam, with more on its design and impact here.
• Satellite-to-phone rivals Lynk Global and Omnispace agreed to merge to consolidate globally coordinated S-band spectrum for direct-to-device services.
• Platform Engineering Labs debuted formae, an open-source, agent-based infrastructure-as-code platform to unify multi-cloud management and prevent drift.
• Found Energy will conduct the biggest real-world test of aluminum as a zero-carbon fuel, using an aluminum–water reactor with a liquid metal catalyst to produce heat and hydrogen.
🔧 Company Engineering Blogs
Inside the AIPCon 8 Demos Transforming Manufacturing, Insurance, and Construction (blog​.palantir​.com). Four Palantir AIPCon 8 demos—Ursa Major, Epirus, Acrisure, and Thomas Cavanagh—show production-ready AI transforming MES, MRPspeed, underwriting, and central operating systems
Scaling Privacy Infrastructure for GenAI Product Innovation (engineering​.fb​.com). Meta scales Privacy Aware Infrastructure (PAI) for GenAI with data lineage, policy enforcement, and on-device/off-cloud processing using PrivacyLib in AI glasses
The Engineer’s Guide to Impact: Finding and Focusing on High-Leverage Work (engineering​.gusto​.com). Identify high-leverage work using a Venn diagram of low effort, high impact, and unique knowledge to multiply impact
Streaming datasets: 100x More Efficient (huggingface​.co). Streaming datasets enable 100x faster data loading with a simple streaming API, dedupe storage (Xet), Parquet CDC, and scalable pipelines
Identify User Journeys at Pinterest (medium​.com/pinterest-engineering). Explore dynamic extraction, hierarchical clustering, journey naming, ranking with diversification, stage prediction, and LLM-based evaluation for Pinterest's user journeys
🏢 Company & Careers
Why I code as a CTO (assembled​.com). CTO John Wang explains coding keep-leverage role, AI-assisted productivity, and three code categories driving product at scale
RavenDB's new offices (ayende​.com). RavenDB expands offices in Hadera as Oren Eini discusses growth and RavenDB’s 15-year journey
The Outage You Couldn't Sleep Through (ninjasandrobots​.com). AWS East outage sparks discussion on redundancy; 8 Sleep sleep tech outage highlights real-world reliance on cloud services
Job Search: 2025 (tifi​.blog). A software engineer’s 2025 job search across 50–60 applications, offers, remote shift, Rust at Dropbox scale, and evolving equity views
The End of the World: 2020-2021 (mediumsecond​.com). During COVID-19, I maintained a medical implants firm’s web presence, tamed technical debt, stabilized iOS app, and navigated burnout and role transitions
đź’¸ VC & Funding
Building Tomorrow’s Transformational Companies (sequoiacap​.com). Sequoia unveils seed and venture funds as AI catalyzes new consumer apps, security, commerce, and physical AI, featuring insights from founders and partners
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas, PhD 21, on why he ditched pitch decks (newsroom​.haas​.berkeley​.edu). Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas discusses ditching pitch decks, AI-driven questions, Comet browser, and rapid product iteration
Transcript: Henry Ward, Carta Chief Executive Officer (ritholtz​.com). Henry Ward of Carta discusses cap tables, private data dematerialization, subscription pricing, and growth challenges
The Trillion-Dollar AI Hardware Opportunity | Navin Chaddha (Managing Partner, Mayfield) (generalist​.com). Navin Chaddha outlines a $1 trillion AI hardware infrastructure and the rise of a vibe economy and stealth startups
Cash Rules Everything Around Me (joereis​.substack​.com). Industry reflections on M&A, open-source culture, AI-driven tooling, and the risk of legacy tools amid funding cycles
Announcing PWV Fund I (tom​.preston-werner​.com). PWV Fund I aims to lead pre-seed and seed rounds in software and AI startups, leveraging founder-focused, community-driven approach
How to Think Like a VC Part III: Biographies of Tech Greatness (medium​.com/@nmoryl). VC mindset guide exploring Silicon Valley greatness through Intel, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Elon Musk, and related leadership and strategy insights
🛠️ Founder Reflections
I Am Out Of Data Hell (ludic​.mataroa​.blog). Founder discusses leaving corporate life, building a small remote consultancy, and monetizing autonomy in software engineering
Attending MicroConf Europe 2025 (herman​.bearblog​.dev). Bootstrapped founder notes from MicroConf Europe 2025 in Istanbul: talks, networking, DropInBlog, ConversionFactory crew, and a memorable steam-room mishap
Business as authorship (jmduke​.com). Entrepreneurship as humane, sustainable authorship: leveraging scale, choosing values over capital, and illustrating an alternate software mindset
Your self as a future adversary (blog​.erlend​.sh). Reflections on steward-ownership, funding models, and how founders can resist partnerships that swerve toward exploitation
Peru birds (zamiang​.com). Photos of larger birds from Peru and reflections on value-based care software, Kelp, and startup leadership insights
New way to introduce myself (manojranaweera​.me). Bootstrapping solo tech founder outlines fintech, Manchester ecosystem work, and ventures like Techcelerate, Deallite, and Skilledup.life
HelpSpot Turns 20 (ianlandsman​.com). HelpSpot founder Ian Landsman reflects on 20 years, remote work, 450 releases, Laravel to Livewire, and staying customer-focused
I'm Unemployable (justinferriman​.com). Entrepreneur reflects on being unemployable, preferring flat, nimble teams and avoiding corporate routines in future ventures
🧠Engineering Leadership
The Engineer’s Guide to Impact: Finding and Focusing on High-Leverage Work (engineering​.gusto​.com). Identify high-leverage work using a Venn diagram of low effort, high impact, and unique knowledge to multiply impact
Shopify Distinguished Eng (L10) on Principal+ Engineering, Career Story, Regrets | Ilya Grigorik (developing​.dev). Ilya Grigorik’s path to Distinguished Engineer at Shopify, Post rank founder, Google Analytics leadership, and insights on co-op programs and acquisitions
Fixing bugs, team stages, and balancing acts 💡 (refactoring​.fm). Explores fixing bugs, team stages using Tuckman model, balancing tech and people duties, and practical backlog strategies
Inside Amazon's Engineering Culture: Lessons from Their Senior Principals (olshansky​.info). Private Amazon engineering open house reveals one-way doors, craft over perks, and Senior Principal roles shaping decisions at scale
T-Shaped engineers: the blueprint for building with AI (paleblueapps​.com). T-shaped engineers blend broad fluency with deep domain expertise to leverage AI for faster, safer software development
Measuring engineering productivity (justoffbyone​.com). A manager-centric, low-overhead system using Slack standups, changelogs, 1:1s, All-Hands, PR notifications, and production verification to measure and improve engineering productivity
Product Driven: The Software Engineering Leadership Model for Product Thinking, Ownership, and Outcomes Hardcover by Matt Watson (businessasusual​.io). Product Driven argues engineers should own outcomes, not outputs, merging business context with technical decisions amid AI-enabled code generation
The path to Staff Engineer part 1: Breaking the Glass Ceiling (grahamgilbert​.com). Explores Staff Engineer as a parallel leadership track, separating technical leadership from management, and breaking the glass ceiling
⚡ Vibe Coding
Code like a surgeon (geoffreylitt​.com). advocates coding like a surgeon, using AI for secondary grunt work with async background tasks and tools like Claude Code and Codex CLI
Vibe Coding vs. Production Ready (jeremybelcher​.co). Why vibe coding can validate ideas quickly; early tech debt is acceptable to test traction and scale with real users
Vibe first, Engineer at the point of maintenance (blog​.alexsanjoseph​.com). Vibe code vs. engineered software: when to speed, validate, and then scale with architecture and reliability considerations
I used to like software development... but not anymore (blog​.kulman​.sk). Former Windows Phone developer laments shift to over-structured, meeting-heavy software development and AI-assisted tooling
Vibe Coding's Uncanny Valley with Alexandre Pesant - #752 (twimlai​.com). Alexandre Pesant discusses vibe coding, context engineering, and agent-based AI development at Lovable
Hackertuah: From Idea to Top 20 on Hacker News in Record Time (kbr​.sh). Rust CLI Hackertuah for Hacker News browsing; AI-assisted development with Claude.ai, Cursor, and Claude Code, achieving Show HN success
🧰 Dev Tools & Data
What leaders need to know from the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (stackoverflow​.blog). Leaders learn how AI reshapes developer experience, tackle tool sprawl, and apply actionable strategies from the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey
I see a future in jj (steveklabnik​.com). Rust’s market fit and community potential; jj VCS adoption by Google and Oxide, Rain, and Martin; transitioning to ERSC and jj ecosystem
Teaching AI to Think Like Me Made Me Rethink How I Think (chudson​.substack​.com). Using Claude Desktop, Cursor, MCP, WisprFlow, and GitHub to build AI-assisted workflows for investing and management, while refining personal decision-making
Reinventing How Analysts Work | Barry McCardel (dataanalysis​.substack​.com). Hex founder Barry McCardel discusses Hex as a connected AI-enabled notebook, notebook agent, and Threads UI for analysts and data teams
ChatGPT Atlas isn't competing against other browsers (notes​.jim-nielsen​.com). Debates on web platform, AI, and UX culture; mentions Atlas browser, Frank Chimero, Tristan Harris, Dave Rupert, Jason Santa Maria, OpenAI, React Server Components, Lava Labs, and Briot- discussions on outputs vs meta-work
Articles2 (abechallah​.com). Advantages of a Python-based web stack, email SEO, social content funnels, and automation for entrepreneurs
Capturing the Human Side of Software with AI Tools (lassala​.net). AI tools like NotebookLM and MacWhisper surface aha moments, sentiment, and citations to reveal the human side of software collaboration
🤖 Agentic Development
Craft and quality beat speed and scale, with or without agents (stackoverflow​.blog). Linear head of engineering Tom Moor discusses AI agents' productivity, context, craft vs speed, Cursor integration, and junior engineers' role
The Mythical Agent-Month: Brooks's Law in the Age of Agentic Software Development (blog​.forret​.com). Late software projects rise and fall under Brooks’s Law, reframed for AI agents, with focus on CI, vibe coding, surgical teams, and prototyping
Agents, knowledge debt, and asynchronous work (frontierai​.substack​.com). Asynchronous agents may clean up knowledge debt and refactor codebases, governance, and marketing assets across diverse tools
Databases for Machines, Not People (thedataexchange​.media). AgentDB enables per-task, per-agent databases; AI agents replace traditional code, shifting toward URL+model apps
Turning Agent Autonomy into Productivity with Chris Weichel (softwareengineeringdaily​.com). Onboarding AI-native development with Ona, secure environments, parallel agents, and code review bottlenecks discussed by Chris Weichel
Influencer Series: Will AI Agents Replace Software Engineers or Make Them More Powerful Than Ever? (alchemistaccelerator​.com). AI agents boost software productivity, enabling human-driven design and architecture with prompts, agent networks, and AI tools like Copilot, Cursor, and Augment Code
This Startup Raised $38M To Secure AI Agents For Developers (upstartsmedia​.com). Keycard, led by Ian Livingstone, raises 38M to secure AI agents via SDKs and runtime tokens amid a rising agent-security race
Inside Cursor’s Enterprise Push, Plus $1.8T Up For Grabs In AI64 Report (upstartsmedia​.com). Cursor’s enterprise push, AI64’s $1.8T opportunity, PLG strategy, technical advisors, and Coinbase usage highlighted