Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318

Hey everybody, welcome back to This Week in Startups. My name is Alex. It is Wednesday, which means it's time for a venture capital round table, and today we have four incredible investors for you. What are we talking about? Well, we're gonna dig into a ban on Chinese humanoid robots, call to slow AI development by AI researchers. Again, startup revenues in the AI era, and why Stripe may be willing to pay so much for open router. There's also neo cloud compute deals and so much more. This week in Startups is brought to you by Northwest registered agent. Get more when you start your business with North West. In ten clicks and ten minutes you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Lear more at Northwest Registered Agent dot com slash twist. Odo, the all in one business platform. Get started for free at ODOO.com slash twist. That's Odo.com slash twist. And MongoDB. AI assisted and agent encoding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at MongoDB.com slash.

AI. To help us get through all of that, we have a couple of friends in one corner. I have David Wisbird of Weisbird Pierce, a longtime friend of the show. David, how you doing? Great to be here. We also had Mr. Didi Doss of Minlo Ventures, a firm that has backed Anthropic, Open Router, Merker, and others. Didi, welcome back yourself. Fantastic to be here, Alex. We also have Lo Tony of Plexo Capital, which has invested in companies like Anthropic Style Seat, Wrapbook, and Blavity. Low, good to have you here. Thanks for having me. And uh last and certainly least, we had Calcandis of Launched, who is back to Uber, ThumbTech, MicroWod, and Athena. Jason, welcome back to your very own show. Uh it's it's great to be home. It's great to be home. I'm on the last stop in my four city tour.

Uh and uh six weeks on the road, I am exhausted, but it's it's uh wrapping up now in New York and I'll be back in Austin. Getting ready for the school year to start, Alex, school year. It's a little you're a little before school year. Well, I guess you have nursery school and stuff like that. Yep, nope. September is my first my first child's gonna be going to school twice twice a week. Uh and I'm a volunteer. So I've had to get background checked and all sorts of fun things because being a parent is just one never ending paperwork slot. It's it's a lot. It's a lot, but uh it's just uh so rewarding. But we had a lot to get to, Alex. So Let's get going here. We got great guests. We got a great docket. And uh there's so much to discuss. I feel like I've been out of it, having not done a news program in two weeks. All right, well, we're gonna start today with news that the Trump administration is banning Chinese robots. The FCC has decided to ban Chinese humanoid. And quadruped robots by adding the hardware to it's called covered list.

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