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Good morning, tech and startup enthusiasts.
Jose here.
Thursday is where we go deep into the week's biggest moves.
Three stories converged this week that show you exactly how the AI hardware race, the robotaxi wars, and government adoption are playing out.
Each one tells you something different about where capital and power are actually flowing.
Let's break it down.
Manufacturing Legend Backs Greenfield Robotics
Howard Dahl spent decades building the machines that feed America. His family invented the Bobcat skid steer. The air drills planting nearly every commodity crop globally? Those too. Now Dahl is manufacturing weed-cutting robots for Greenfield Robotics out of his Fargo factory, and he wrote his own check on top of it.
Greenfield's current fleet is sold out, with over $1 million in total revenue and robots in the field since 2020. Chipotle’s venture arm and KingsCrowd Capital are also on board. The robots slice weeds with centimeter precision, replacing herbicides linked to environmental damage and rising health concerns among farmers.
Greenfield is now in Test the Waters under Reg A+. Reserving shares today locks in a 5% bonus that can grow to 20% the week the round opens to the public.
Greenfield Robotics is Testing The Waters under tier 2 of Regulation A. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement filed by the company with the SEC has been qualified by the SEC. Any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of acceptance given after the date of qualification. An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. “Reserving” shares is simply an indication of interest. There is no binding commitment for investors that reserve shares in this manner to ultimately invest and purchase the shares reserved of the company, or to purchase any shares of the company whatsoever.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI |
🎮 OPENAI SHIPPED HARDWARE. BUT NOT WHAT YOU THINK. |
The Deal: OpenAI is launching Codex Micro on July 15. It's not a consumer device. It's not a phone. It's a programmable macro pad built with Work Louder (boutique keyboard maker).
What It Is: Think of it as a tactical tool for power users. 13 mechanical keys, a joystick, rotary encoder, multiple programmable layers. All designed to map your most-used Codex commands to physical buttons instead of keyboard chords or clicking around a GUI.
Codex is OpenAI's AI coding agent. It has 5 million weekly active users. These users do repetitive coding tasks constantly: review PR, generate test suite, explain code, run tests, propose changes. The macro pad maps those to single button presses.
The Strategy: This is hardware as friction erasure.
When "generate test suite" takes one keystroke instead of three menu clicks plus typing a prompt, you use it more. More usage means more API calls. More API calls means more tokens consumed. More tokens means higher switching costs.
OpenAI is explicitly anchoring developers deeper into its ecosystem by making Codex easier to use every single day.
Why It Matters: This is OpenAI running two hardware tracks simultaneously. Track 1: Codex Micro for developers right now (niche, targeted, high margin on usage). Track 2: Consumer device with Jony Ive for later (mass market, flagship, still on track for H2 2026).
For developers using Claude Code or Cursor? This is OpenAI saying get locked into our workflow or fall behind. Physical buttons hit psychological barriers harder than software shortcuts.
Pricing will likely be $150-200 based on Work Louder's Creator Micro 2 baseline.
The Play: This is not about hardware sales revenue. This is about ecosystem lock-in. Every developer who buys Codex Micro is paying a subscription tax to OpenAI for the next five years. That's recurring revenue that compounds.
ROBOTAXI |
🚗 WAYMO AND UBER JUST BROKE UP IN PHOENIX |
What Happened: Three-year partnership ended in May 2026 (quietly). Waymo's vehicles are no longer available on Uber's ride-hail app in Phoenix. The pilot involved about a dozen vehicles but completed hundreds of thousands of trips.
Both companies said it hit its contracted end date. But that's the cover story. Here's what actually happened.
The Real Conflict: Uber wants to be the gateway for every autonomous vehicle. You open Uber, you see Waymo, Tesla, Cruise competitors, all in one app. Uber takes the transaction fee.
Waymo wants you to know you're riding with Waymo. Brand loyalty. Recognition. Repeat bookings through their own app, not Uber's.
In Austin and Atlanta, Uber is the only gateway, so Waymo accepted that trade. In Phoenix, Waymo had its own app running parallel to Uber's deployment. Two channels. Split loyalty.
Uber didn't like that. Waymo didn't like the terms. Contract ended. Relationship paused.
Why It Matters: The robotaxi business is consolidating around platform power.
Uber is announcing a new AV partner in Phoenix (not named yet). Waymo is expanding to Dallas with Moove and Avis as fleet partners (not ride-hail apps). Both are moving toward a model where they control their distribution.
For investors: Waymo in Austin/Atlanta (exclusive to Uber) is performing better than Waymo in Phoenix (shared between Waymo and Uber apps). Data wins arguments. Exclusivity wins markets.
For founders: The robotaxi space looks settled. Waymo is consolidating. Uber is diversifying AV partners but keeping the app. Tesla's robotaxi strategy is offline. Smaller players (Cruise, Aurora, Zoox) are struggling to scale.
The Play: This signals that multi-partner platform strategies are harder than single-partner. Waymo and Uber both learned that they work better apart than together in the same city.
AI |
🏛️ CALIFORNIA JUST BOUGHT THE BIGGEST GOVERNMENT AI DEAL EVER |
What Happened: Governor Newsom and Anthropic signed a historic deal. All California state agencies and local governments now have access to Claude at 50% off standard pricing. Plus free training and technical support from Anthropic.
This covers 480,000+ state employees across the entire executive branch: DMV, Department of Healthcare Services, CalTrans, everything.
Claude becomes the first AI tool available statewide through a centralized procurement portal called SITeS (Statewide Information Technology Shared Services).
The Numbers: California has a $310 billion annual state budget. This deal just gave Anthropic a permission architecture to claim first-mover advantage in the largest procurement market in the country (outside the federal government, which banned Anthropic after the DoD dispute).
No contract value was disclosed. But at scale, this is high-confidence territory for Anthropic.
Why It Matters (The Political Layer): This is messy.
The federal government declared Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company refused to build mass surveillance tools and fully autonomous weapons for the Pentagon. The Pentagon signed with OpenAI instead.
Newsom just publicly broke from the federal government. He said: We trust Anthropic. We're betting on them. We're betting big.
This is California saying it will set its own AI standards separate from Washington.
Why It Matters (The Business Layer): For Anthropic, this is a reference customer that is simultaneously a regulator, a political body, and the world's fifth-largest economy. You can't overstate that advantage.
For OpenAI, this is a shot across the bow. OpenAI owns federal relationships (Pentagon, etc). Anthropic just locked state-level relationships.
For other AI companies, this shows the playbook: win government early, win enterprise later. California is the proving ground for half the country's policy thinking.
The Play: Anthropic is betting on IPO in October 2026. This deal is the proof point that governments trust Claude. It's the validation narrative for the roadshow.
For founders building AI tools, watch how Newsom's office negotiated: 50% discount for enterprise, free training included, dedicated technical support, statewide rollout (not a pilot).
That's the government AI deal structure you're competing against now.
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QUICK HITS
⚡ QUICK HITS: CAPITAL MOVING EVERYWHERE
Higgsfield AI Video Startup 4x'd in Four Months. Raising $300-500M at $5B valuation (was $1.2B in January). AI video generation is red hot. This is the fundraising velocity when product-market fit is real.
TIDAL Cracks Down on AI Music. Demonetizing 100% AI-generated tracks starting July 15. Deezer already removes AI tracks from recommendations. Streaming platforms drawing hard lines on what counts as "real" music now.
Nvidia Custom Chips Expanding. OpenAI building Jalapeño inference chips with Broadcom. Google, Apple, SpaceX all building custom chips. Nvidia's era of total dependence ending. Margins compress, competition expands.
California's Poppy AI Assistant Rolled Out. State-built AI tool for government workflows. Piloted with 2,800+ employees across 67 departments. Now going statewide in July. This is how governments skip vendor lock-in.
Baz Extends Seed to $17M. Agentic coding company expanding seed round. They're the bet that autonomous code agents replace human engineers at code planning stage. Market is rewarding the idea.
Meta Testing MetaCode. Meta's in-house coding assistant. Every mega-cap building their own models, their own hardware, their own tools. Vertical integration winning the AI wars.
JOSE'S FINAL WORD
Three stories. Three different layers of the same thing: consolidation is accelerating.
Hardware: OpenAI shipping Codex Micro means every developer tool company just got a deadline. Friction matters. Physical buttons change behavior. You need to ship hardware or get locked out.
Robotaxi: Waymo and Uber splitting in Phoenix means the multi-partner strategy is dead. You either control distribution or you get squeezed. Consolidation is happening now.
Government: California buying Claude at scale means state-level procurement just became a battleground. Whoever wins California wins the narrative for the next five years of government AI policy. Anthropic just moved the chessboard.
The winners are consolidating. The losers are fragmenting.
Watch capital flows. Follow where state governments are buying. Replicate what works.
Hunt accordingly. ☕
Jose