StackBlitz rose from the dead: from zombie startup to $40 million in 3 months

The story of the StackBlitz startup resembles a real resurrection from the dead. The company was founded back in ’17 by school friends Eric Simons and Albert Pai. Their first product WebContainers allowed developers to create and manage projects directly in the browser, without the need to use local laptop resources.

6 years later, the company turned into a zombie startup, which still exists but no longer develops. Despite support from solid investors, including the Insight Partners fund.

And a representative of Insight Partners set a deadline — by the end of ’24, they needed to determine the fate of StackBlitz. The founders were downcast, since no breakthrough with their current technologies was foreseen. However, they were simultaneously studying how various artificial intelligence models cope with programming. And decided to create a new service based on this model for so-called “vibe coding.” An approach where the user explains in words what they need, and the service independently writes code. The product was named Bolt.new and was developed by a team of 10 employees in 3 months.

And then in the first week, the service brought in $1 million of annual recurring revenue!! And another week later — another million. A month after launch, investors received a letter with an impressive headline: “From zero to $4 million ARR in 30 days.” In the first few weeks, the number of users grew to 14 thousand.

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UBTech will send Walker S2 robots to serve on China's border for $37 million

Chinese company UBTech won a contract for $37 million. And will send humanoid robots Walker S2 to serve on China's border with Vietnam. South China Morning Post reports that the robots will interact with tourists and staff, perform logistics operations, inspect cargo and patrol the area. And characteristically — they can independently change their battery.

Anthropic accidentally revealed an internal document about Claude's "soul"

Anthropic accidentally revealed the "soul" of artificial intelligence to a user. And this is not a metaphor. This is a quite specific internal document.

Jensen Huang ordered Nvidia employees to use AI everywhere

Jensen Huang announced total mobilization under the banner of artificial intelligence inside Nvidia. And this is no longer a recommendation. This is a requirement.

AI chatbots generate content that exacerbates eating disorders

A joint study by Stanford University and the Center for Democracy and Technology showed a disturbing picture. Chatbots with artificial intelligence pose a serious risk to people with eating disorders. Scientists warn that neural networks hand out harmful advice about diets. They suggest ways to hide the disorder and generate "inspiring weight loss content" that worsens the problem.

OpenAGI released the Lux model that overtakes Google and OpenAI

Startup OpenAGI released the Lux model for computer control and claims this is a breakthrough. According to benchmarks, the model overtakes analogues from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic by a whole generation. Moreover, it works faster. About 1 second per step instead of 3 seconds for competitors. And 10 times cheaper in cost per processing 1 token.