Oct 6, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ Discount War

Plus: The $5B Database, a16z‘s AI Spending Map

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

The race is no longer about who builds faster, it’s about who spends smarter.

Tesla Starts a Discount War

pic.twitter.com/WscJ610E7n
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2025

👀 What’s the move: Right after the seven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar U.S. EV tax credit expired, Tesla released a short teaser for its October 7 event, which is widely expected to introduce a cheaper, simplified Model Y. According to reports, the new version will cost around twenty percent less to produce and could reach a production volume of two-hundred-fifty-thousand units a year by 2026, just as most competitors are struggling with higher battery prices and shrinking incentives.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Elon Musk is effectively launching a price war in the post-subsidy American EV market. By pushing an ultra-efficient model right after government support has ended, Tesla keeps the demand curve in its favor while forcing rivals to burn cash to keep up. A lower-cost fleet also strengthens Tesla’s long-promised robotaxi strategy, since the cheaper each car becomes, the faster autonomy can spread across cities.

⛵ Key takeaway: The tax credits may be gone, but Tesla has become the subsidy itself.

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Supabase Turns Postgres Into a $5B Religion

👀 What’s the move: Supabase just raised $100M at a $5B valuation, only four months after its last round at $2B. The open-source backend built on PostgreSQL is now the go-to foundation for AI-era coding tools, used by 4M+ developers and enterprise names from PwC to GitHub Next. The company also opened this round to its community, signaling that its “open” ethos is more than branding.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Supabase isn’t trying to out-AI anyone, it’s quietly building the rails that AI developers actually deploy on. Its innovation lies in packaging the boring yet reliable elements of database management such as authentication, storage, and APIs into a developer experience that feels like Firebase but is built on open standards. In an age where every startup is chasing “agents,” Supabase sells the backend gravity that keeps them from floating away.

⛵ Key takeaway: While others chase AGI, Supabase sells shovels to the coders building it—and somehow made open source feel like luxury infrastructure.

RESEARCH

a16z Publishes the First Real AI Spending Map

👀 What’s the move: Andreessen Horowitz dropped its first AI Spending Report using transaction data (June – August 2025) from Mercury’s 200,000+ startup clients. The results show where companies are actually paying, not just browsing; and the money still floods to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Replit. Beneath them, hundreds of copilots fight for attention, and no single category has consolidated.

💡 Why it’s not boring: a16z just turned startup banking data into a heatmap of who’s actually monetizing AI hype. The picture is messy but revealing: founders are still buying “assistants,” not “agents.” Enterprise-grade copilots rule, while true autonomous workflows remain mostly vapor. The report also hints at a fast-erasing line between consumer and enterprise, with Canva, CapCut, and Midjourney are sneaking into office budgets.

⛵ Key takeaway: The AI economy remains trapped in “copilot mode,” where tools assist rather than replace humans, and where disorder, not consolidation, has become the prevailing business model.

STARTUP SPOT

🧠 Supabase
“Open-source backend for devs.”
PostgreSQL platform with auth, storage, real-time APIs, and edge functions for fast app builds.
→ Founded 2020 by Paul Copplestone & Ant Wilson; Series E $100M (Oct 2025, Accel + Peak XV) at ~$5B valuation; $70M ARR, 10K+ paying teams including Figma Ventures.

💻 Cerebras
“Wafer-scale AI compute.”
Builds massive WSE-3 chips and CS systems to train and run models faster than GPUs.
→ Founded 2015 by Andrew Feldman; Series G $1.1B (Sep 2025) at $8.1B valuation; opened 10MW OKC data center, won $45M DoD contract, withdrew IPO post-raise.

🌐 Lore
“Search for the obsessed.”
AI discovery engine surfacing theories, easter eggs, and fandom deep dives across the web.
→ Founded 2025 by ex-Headline Ventures investor Zehra Naqvi; pre-seed $1.1M (Oct 2025) led by Village Global; early traction among Gen Z fandom creators.

BAY AREA MEMOS

California regulators charged Tesla Insurance with systemic delays and unfair claim denials after years of violations.
Ex-investor Zehra Naqvi raised $1.1M for Lore, an AI search engine that helps fans rediscover the joy of diving deep into their internet obsessions.
AI chipmaker Cerebras withdrew its US IPO plans after raising $1.1 billion at an $8.1 billion valuation to reassess its timing for going public.
Firefly Aerospace will acquire defense technology firm SciTec for $855 million to strengthen its position in military and space security.
PitchBook finds that in 2025, AI dominates venture capital, leaving non-AI sectors largely sidelined.

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