Aug 13, 2025 4 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ $1 Deathmatch

More Stories: Perplexity Wants Headlines, Musk's Monopoly Insurance

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

Today where $1 buys you a front-row seat to corporate trench warfare, acquisition offers read like ad campaigns, and rocket launches become legal strategy — welcome to the circus.

Anthropic Joins the $1 Deathmatch

👀 What’s the move: One week after OpenAI’s $1-a-year gambit for the executive branch, Anthropic just widened the war zone — offering Claude to all three branches of U.S. government for the same price. And they’re not just selling licenses; they’re bundling FedRAMP High security, multicloud flexibility, and hands-on integration support.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn’t a promo — it’s a scorched-earth pricing war for federal AI mindshare. By undercutting on cost and over-delivering on reach, Anthropic’s gunning for structural lock-in before procurement officers even think “RFP.” The $1 game has become an arms race in which the “winner” might burn millions just to deny the other guy a seat at the table.

⛵ Key takeaway: The $1 war is no loss leader — it’s mutually assured market destruction, waged in the corridors of government.

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Perplexity Bids on What It Can’t Afford

👀 What’s the move: Perplexity just lobbed a $34.5B cash offer for Google’s Chrome — over 20x the $1.5B it’s actually raised. They promise to keep Chromium open source, leave Google as default search, and toss $3B into the project. Google’s not selling, but the DOJ’s antitrust push could make the fantasy feel momentarily plausible.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn’t Perplexity’s first “public shopping trip.” From hinting at buying TikTok to now “offering” for Chrome, the AI search startup has mastered the PR arbitrage of tying its name to billion-dollar brands — knowing the deal will likely never close but the headlines will. In startup land, free press is cheaper than paid ads.

⛵ Key takeaway: When you can’t buy market share, just bid for someone else’s — loudly.

SPACE

SpaceX Launches Amazon Satellites as Monopoly Insurance

👀 What’s the move: SpaceX just put 24 more Amazon Kuiper satellites into orbit—helping build a network meant to compete directly with its own Starlink. For Musk, this isn’t charity. It’s a calculated move to show regulators he’s not monopolizing the skies, even if it means literally fueling his biggest competitor.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Starlink already dominates with 6M+ subs. If Musk refused to launch rivals, the DOJ could eventually paint him as the gatekeeper of orbital broadband. By giving Bezos a lift—twice now—he’s preemptively building an antitrust defense file while still pocketing the launch fees.

⛵ Key takeaway: In space capitalism, sometimes you feed your rival just enough oxygen to prove you’re not choking them.

STARTUP SPOT

🪐 Squint
“AR guides for factory floors.”
Captures expert workflows, auto-builds visual step guides, delivers real-time AR support.
→ Founded 2021; raised $40M Series B at $265M; used by PepsiCo, Michelin, Ford.

💬 Continua
“AI agent for your group chats.”
Joins SMS, iMessage, Discord to summarize, remind, schedule, and search in real time.
→ Founded 2023 by ex-Google eng David Petrou; raised $8M seed (GV, Bessemer).

🤖 SiMa.ai
“Physical AI at the edge.”
MLSoC + SDK for efficient AI on drones, robots, industrial vision—10× perf per watt.
→ Founded 2018 by ex-Groq/Xilinx; raised ~$270M; customers in manufacturing, auto, defense.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Squint secures $40 million in series B funding to advance its AI and augmented reality platform for manufacturing training.
Former Google engineer raises $8 million from GV and others for Continua, an AI agent designed to enhance group chats.
Circle Q2 revenue surged, driven by a jump in USDC circulation that boosted interest income from reserve assets.
The White House suggests that revenue-sharing deals for chip sales to China, currently in place with Nvidia and AMD, could be extended to other companies.
Elon Musk threatens to sue Apple, alleging antitrust violations over ChatGPT's top ranking in the App Store.

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