Iain Martin

Applied Intuition's Plan To Bring Self-Driving Tech To Everything That Moves Applied Intuition’s cofounders are building software that can drive everything from planes to tanks to automobiles. But to expand beyond its $800 million business selling tech for cars, they will have...

NEW: @iainmartin.bsky.social and I looked into Silicon Valley tech firm Applied Intuition and plans by its billionaire cofounders to lead in the race to automate everything that moves #autonomousvehicles #AI www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

A Laser Weapon Targeted Suspected Drones. It Hit Party Balloons Instead. CBP fired the laser thinking it was aiming at cartel drones, leading the FAA to close the airspace over El Paso—and causing an uproar in Washington.

Against the expressed wishes of the FAA, CBP had used the Pentagon’s highly classified laser-weapon system to shoot down what it thought was a handful of Mexican cartel drones on the southern border. The aerial objects were likely party balloons
www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Secretive Silicon Valley Investments Thanks to his relationships to tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Epstein had access to a number of lucrative tech investments. But he walked away from several deals with major startups...

Jeffrey #Epstein had access to tech billionaires like Thiel and Musk. But he walked away from deals with major startups—including Spotify & SpaceX—that could have netted him hundreds of millions in total.

Deep dive from @iainmartin.bsky.social + me for @forbes.com:

www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Epstein Built Deep Ties To Silicon Valley. But His Tech Investment Record Was Lackluster Thanks to his relationships to tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Epstein had access to a number of lucrative tech investments. But he walked away from several deals with major startups...

Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Secretive Silicon Valley Investments www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Did Epstein’s relationship with Peter Thiel cost him a potential $500m+ windfall from Spotify’s massive IPO?

A Former Russian Jewelry Magnate’s Humanoid Robot Startup Is In Talks To Raise $200 Million www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

How Jeffrey Epstein Helped His Publicist Become A Big-Time Venture Capitalist Masha Bucher is one of the more high profile female VCs in Silicon Valley. New emails released from the Department of Justice reveal a deep, years long relationship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffr...

How Jeffrey Epstein Helped His Publicist Masha Bucher Become A Big-Time Venture Capitalist www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

VCs’ Favorite Note-Taking App Granola In Talks To Hit $1 Billion Valuation The London-based AI startup aims to raise a new round of at least $100 million led by Index Ventures, making the popular note-taking app the latest AI unicorn.

Granola is the AI note-taker app that has clicked (crunched?) for VCs, and startups. Now the London-based startup is raising on a billion dollar plus valuation www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Since AI note-taker Granola launched in 2024 its quickly become a fixture for VCs and increasingly startup founders and operators. Now it's in talks with investors to raise at a valuation of over $1 billion www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Defense Tycoon Strnad’s Wealth Soars to $37 Billion After IPO Michal Strnad’s wealth surged to $37 billion, or roughly 10% of the Czech economy, after shares in the defense tycoon’s armaments company jumped in their trading debut.

Michal Strnad’s wealth surged to $37 billion, or roughly 10% of the Czech economy, after shares in the defense tycoon’s armaments company jumped in their trading debut.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Napster Is (Sort of) Back With Something They Call a Hologram The future is a strange place, especially when it features a walk-in cameo from Napster selling... AI heads? Holograms?

"AI is already everywhere. The last thing I want is it literally staring me in the face eye to soulless eye."
www.vice.com/en/article/n... Vice on Napster's (nee Infinite Reality) new product

AI Startup Merges With A Billionaire-Backed Data Center Operator In $2.5 Billion Deal The startup behind open source tool PyTorch Lightning has merged with compute provider Voltage Park to create a “full stack AI cloud” to serve corporates and startups like Cursor.

PyTorch Lightning's developer merges with "neocloud" Voltage Park to create an “AI cloud” with a $2.5B valuation, managing 35,000+ Nvidia GPUs across six data centers www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

This $500 Million AI Startup Runs Customer Interviews For Microsoft And Sweetgreen The San Francisco-based company, which has run more than 1 million customer interviews with its automated AI tools to help major companies figure out what their users want, has now raised $69 million.

“There’s so much AI slop out there...it has become really important to understand what people want,” says Alfred Wahlforss who just raised $69m for AI consumer research startup Listen Labs “We help you talk to real people.”
www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

AI Fraud Has Exploded. Background-Check Startup Checkr Is Cashing In. San Francisco-based Checkr has seen its revenues jump 14% to $800 million as companies try to spot a flood of AI-generated CVs and faked financial documents.

Checkr, which got its start running criminal record checks on Uber drivers and gig workers, has seen its revenues jump 14% to $800 million as companies try to spot a flood of AI-generated CVs and faked financial documents.
www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

The startup behind popular Github project vLLM is out fundraising, as venture capitalists hunt for companies building tech that can make AI systems run more efficiently.
www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Lovable just raised at a $6.6 billion valuation. That makes it's 26-year-old cofounder, Fabian Hedin, one of Europe's youngest ever self-made billionaires (another Swedish AI whiz holds the lead) www.forbes.com/sites/alicia...

“The White House is sidestepping the law to bless a structure that leaves TikTok’s core technology in China,” said Jim Secreto, a former US Treasury official involved in overseeing TikTok. “What was announced looks more like a franchise arrangement than a true divestiture.”

French healthtech Doctolib, worth $6.4B and once that country’s highest valued startup, is in talks for a secondary investment in the hundreds of millions. For @forbes.com w/ @iainmartin.bsky.social

www.forbes.com/sites/amyfel...

Hummingbird’s VCs Look To Invest In Founders With Childhood Trauma Partners Barend Van den Brande and Firat Ileri at low-profile London fund Hummingbird both won spots on the Midas List Europe for tearing up the venture rulebook and backing “outlier” founders.

When startup BillionToOne went public last month its largest shareholder was a little-known fund Hummingbird, who had led a $15m round in 2019. Now that stake is worth $745m. And other outlier bets on Lovable, Kraken & Peak Games have driven 10x returns. www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

The Institute of Economic Affairs Banked £640,000 from Oil Giants and Murdoch The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – the anti-state, anti-climate pressure group – received more than £640,000 from fossil fuel companies and Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate between 1957 and ...

"The IEA does not publicly disclose its donors and this is the first time that its historic funding sources have been revealed in detail – exposing the financial interests that helped the group to become an influential force in British politics." www.desmog.com/2025/12/10/t...

China’s AI Power Play: Cheap Electricity From World’s Biggest Grid Government push for power supremacy transforms Inner Mongolia. Tech leaders worry about a U.S.-China “electron gap.”

"Between '10 and '24, China's power production increased by more than the rest of the world combined. Last year, China generated more than twice as much electricity as the U.S. Some Chinese data centers are now paying less than half what American ones pay for electricity" www.wsj.com/tech/china-a...

From 2,600% Gain to 86% Wipeout, Crypto’s Hottest Trade Crumpled What began the year as one of the best trades in the stock market has, in a matter of months, turned into one of the worst.

"It was always hard to explain why tokens should be worth more just because they were held by a public company, and the wheels began to come off the car, at first slowly and then much more quickly"

allow me to take you on a journey where, once again, we learn we have no idea what’s in our food. at least we know corporations are pure of heart so I’m sure it’s fine🫶🏼🤡 TikTok video by kaelin

a type of content that makes me want to launch myself into space and is huge part of why everything is so bad: TikToker goes down a “rabbit hole,” makes 9-minute video. The “rabbit hole” was she found an Eater article. The Eater journalist did all the work: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTruBS8cp/

Exclusive | Saudi Fund to Own Almost All of Electronic Arts After Buyout PIF is on course to own 93% of the videogame maker, implying it needs to stump about $29 billion in addition to rolling over its existing stake.

A filing with Brazil’s antitrust regulator shows PIF would own 93.4% of video games giant Electronic Arts, while Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity would own 5.5% and 1.1% respectively. That puts the onus on PIF to fund almost all of the $29 billion deal www.wsj.com/business/dea...

How A Tiny Polish Startup Became The Multi-Billion-Dollar Voice Of AI ElevenLabs’ computer voices are so convincing they could fool your mother. That’s both a blessing and a curse for the four-year-old company.

The full story is on Forbes www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

The new edition of Forbes magazine just dropped - the cover story is on two 30-year-old entrepreneurs from Poland, who sick of bad movie dubbing, built their own voice AI model. Today, it's worth $6.6 billion, they are new billionaires & are beating Silicon Valley's tech giants

No one loves consultants but this is also likely to be true for most partnership-based professional services like law, accountancy...

The worrying outcome is a "needle" structure where new hires are only brought on board as an apprentice or trainee for outgoing partners. Guess who gets hired in this scenario

"Some are betting on an “obelisk” structure, with fewer layers and less reliance on junior staff, while others predict an “hourglass” — pinched in the middle as AI automates mid-level routine tasks."

Top consultancies freeze starting salaries as AI threatens ‘pyramid’ model Productivity gains from technology are spurring debate about reliance on large numbers of junior advisers

The upheaval means that the traditional [consulting] pyramid, in which a firm employs thousands of junior-level employees and thins out the ranks with an “up or out” promotion culture, could be set to change, according to experts.  
www.ft.com/content/2b15...

How A Tiny Polish Startup Became The Multi-Billion-Dollar Voice Of AI ElevenLabs’ computer voices are so convincing they could fool your mother. That’s both a blessing and a curse for the four-year-old company.

How A Tiny Polish Startup Became The Multi-Billion-Dollar Voice Of AI www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...