Pulse
Stories about startups we watched early: what they shipped, how they put it in front of people, and what the public record shows — the filings, the launches, the archived pages.
Technology
Business model
- Monthly briefOctober2026
- ·AI returns improve when firms redesign work, measure outcomes and preserve human judgement
- ·Change creates value when firms build capability, not rely on repeated structural fixes
- ·Persistent supply inflation strains households, while local institutions shape who gains from growth
It sold governments the data from satellites it kept, even when a buyer wanted its ownHawkEye 360
Three managers who sold a legal drafting tool carried its method into food qualityBackbone AI
Launched against the chip buildout, funded nine months later for making the chips work harderFlapping Airplanes
With no listing to cash out in, the payments company priced itself and bought staff sharesStripe- Monthly briefSeptember2026
- ·AI value depends on redesigning work, not simply deploying more capable tools
- ·Leadership gains depend on pairing strategic change with operating discipline and earned trust
- ·Sustainability creates value through practical benefits, but energy constraints govern delivery
Every dollar of its $300M order book is rented rather than sold – which is why it needs $620M to fill itAgility Robotics
For eight years it licensed its memory into other companies' chips; now it sells the part itselfFMC
It sold every test on the road to a Mach 5 airliner, then dropped the airlinerHermeus
A self-serve fashion image tool now also sells the art directors who work itModelia
It shipped a model it called glitchy to people who enjoyed that, then sold the same one to robotsOdyssey
It sold a workspace by the seat, then kept only what no other tool could seePlot
SAP had already built its own tabular model; it still paid about €0.4bn in cash for the one everyone benchmarks againstPrior Labs
A fleet that was beating its forecasts got scrapped: nobody would fund one kitchen per customerWonder
Paid by the check, it kept giving part of each check backYardstik