Josh Machiz

Lightspeed @lightspeedvp · 1d

AI in Space

Google says it received the first-ever AI response from a data center-class TPU in orbit. It asked Gemma 4 to write a haiku about space. The satellite sent back this response over Norway:

“Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core.”

More on Lightwork this week:

→ The $6.3B Binance Hack

The FBI attributed the roughly $6.3B Binance theft to North Korea’s state-run hacker unit, TraderTraitor. Binance says attackers used a fake job interview to get malware onto an engineer’s work computer, then used an internal AI tool to reach other engineers’ systems.

→ Cybersecurity Gets Physical

Cyberattacks targeted supermarket refrigeration systems across Europe and plasma storage sites in France, showing how digital vulnerabilities can put food and medical supplies at risk. No blood products were lost in the plasma-storage incident.

→ Is the Internet Dying?

Hosts @clairejyz and @Machiz discuss AI slop and how AI overviews are affecting Reddit’s traffic. Andrej Karpathy’s HackerTube takes a different approach to discovery, surfacing YouTube videos recommended on Hacker News. As content gets easier to produce, does curation become more valuable?

0:00 Welcome to Lightwork
1:09 Google's AI Breakthrough in Space
1:45 Project Star Catcher and Space Data Centers
6:01 Google's Next Steps for Space Data Centers
7:27 Binance's $6.3 Billion Crypto Theft
10:56 Cyberattacks Target Supermarket Freezers
14:27 Is the Internet Dying?
15:57 Andrej Karpathy's Answer to AI Slop
16:58 Reddit Loses Traffic to Google's AI Search
20:02 AI Reviews vs. Human Commentary
21:40 How Marketers Can Leverage Reddit in the AI Era
23:31 Why Content Curation Matters in the AI Era

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Alex Konrad Verified account @alexrkonrad · 2d

How does a corporate card startup become a $60B AI product factory?

In our first on-camera interview a decade in the making, Ramp co-CEO Eric Glyman (@eglyman) answers just that question.

Today, @tryramp is best known for its corporate cards, or maybe its marketing stunts with the likes of Kevin from ‘The Office,’ Tony Hawk and a 70-minute Broadway musical about paying bills.

But Eric says his $60B startup, NYC's most valuable, feels less like a fintech and more like a productivity company driven by one simple question: If a business spends $100 to make $200, how can Ramp improve that ratio?

Nearly 100,000 companies use Ramp today for everything from expenses to managing AI spend. But Eric says that when he zooms out to the millions who still aren't customers, Ramp feels painfully early still.

On The Upstarts Podcast, Eric shares why he’d rather run Ramp like Amazon than Google; why Ramp hires for proof of work, not credentials, from a 14-year-old intern to a 28-year-old CTO; and how being the first customer for Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cognition’s Devin led Ramp to build its own AI tools.

Plus: The real story of Paribus, his first startup with co-founder Karim Atiyeh (@karimatiyeh); what they learned at Capital One; and a warning for Instinct and Muse.

This season is presented by @Atlassian and @chargebee 🫡

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:51 What Ramp Actually Does
03:27 From Gym Charges To 1% Of U.S. Corporate Payments
05:13 Glass, Inspect And Building AI Tools For Itself
07:45 An AI Sales Assistant Before ChatGPT
09:45 How Ramp Decides What Products To Ship
11:14 First Customer For Claude Code And Cognition’s Devin
13:09 Why Ramp Wanted To Build Like Amazon, Not Google
15:42 Hiring For Proof Of Work: The 14-Year-Old Intern
18:43 A .300 Batting Average And ‘Growth Without Fear’
21:17 What Ramp’s Founders Learned At Capital One
24:00 The $1,000 Flight Refund Behind Paribus
26:34 Bots, A Cease-And-Desist, And A Lesson For Instinct And Muse
32:00 Marketing 101: Bill Pay The Musical And Kevin In A Glass Cube
36:01 Business Books And Helping People Do Their Life’s Work
39:03 How A 28-Year-Old CTO Catalyzed A Co-CEO Change
43:55 ‘Still So Early’: How Ramp’s Founders Stay Hungry
55:26 John Wooden And Why Ramp Competes Against Itself

Thanks for watching!

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Sophia Yang Verified account @sophiamyang · 3d

Discussing specialized intelligence with besties @Machiz @SGRegan_

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