🧗 Climbing the corporate tower

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👋 Good morning. And yes — everyone around you is moving to the Bay Area to build their startup. Including Chonkers, the 2k-pound sea lion who hangs out on San Francisco’s Pier 39 despite being ~3x the size of his sea lion peers. Obviously, Chonkers and his oversized flops have gone viral on social media and attracted the adoration of spectators. We heard he’s raising a seed round, too.

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NEWS FLASH

A mobile phone screen filling up with message bubbles.

💬 The group chat is popping off… but half of those witty jokes are coming from bots. Shapes — a startup that just emerged from stealth with $8m in seed funding — built an app where humans and AI characters can chat together in shared conversations. Bots, which are called Shapes and labeled clearly in the app, can be customized with unique personalities and used to facilitate conversations. The startup says its 400k+ monthly active users have already created 3m Shapes.

⌛ AI, but retro: “Vintage LLMs,” a term coined by AI researcher Owain Evans, are LLMs trained only on data from a specific time period so you can see, for example, what it’d be like to talk to someone who doesn’t know what a cellphone is. The model Talkie has a cutoff of 1930. While it’s not perfect — Gizmodo found it hallucinated a 19th-century cricket match — its creators offer an interesting use case: Can such models predict what will happen or make future discoveries based on the knowledge they have?

👻 I ain’t afraid of no sound: A small study found that while humans are unable to hear low-frequency “infrasound,” or sounds below 20 hertz, participants exposed to it experienced higher cortisol levels and more negative feelings. Infrasound is produced by both nature — thunder, earthquakes — and man-made sources, like traffic, AC units, and wind farms. It could explain why some places give us bad vibes. (We previously wrote about a startup that wants to use infrasound for fire suppression.)

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

They’ve got baggage: Japan Airlines will start testing humanoid robots as baggage handlers next month at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. The hope is that they’ll eventually be able to address a shortage of human workers.
Vibe-code on the go: Lovable released its vibe-coding app builder to Apple and Google’s app stores, allowing users to now switch between their computers and phones.
We’d try it: Nutella’s first new flavor in its 62-year history is Nutella Peanut. Parent company Ferrero is producing it at its Chicago-area factory, so it’s also the first time Nutella has been produced in the US.
Uber helpful: Along with your ride and your dinner, Uber now wants to book your next hotel stay, partnering with Expedia to let users reserve rooms directly in-app.

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM

An illustration of a mobile phone with several small bots flowing into it.

An even smarter smartphone?

That’s OpenAI’s hope. The AI behemoth is allegedly working on building its own device that would let users complete tasks directly through AI rather than apps.

Before you toss your iPhone in the trash, mass production would likely not begin until 2028.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

Several natural materials sit in tubes and on coasters.

This company turns plants into healthy, sustainable fabrics

We all know that synthetics like polyester aren’t great for the environment, but neither are some natural fibers.

“Most people are surprised to know that cotton is very unsustainable due to its heavy use of pesticides and incredible amounts of water,” Kat Dey told The Hustle.

Dey is the co-founder and president of Ettitude, a luxury bedding brand, and PLNTmatter, a B2B material science company born out of the former’s extensive R&D. PLNTmatter has developed 80+ sustainable fabrics by mixing up weaving techniques, processes, and materials.

How it works

You’ve probably seen terms like lyocell or viscose if you’ve spent much time researching bed sheets or clothing (Tencel is a brand of lyocell fiber).

Both fibers are made using wood pulp, but viscose uses toxic chemicals, and lyocell, a newer method, does not, thus reducing worker exposure, chemical residue on finished goods, and eutrophication.

PLNTmatter’s flagship product — and what Ettitude’s bedding is made from — is CleanBamboo®, a proprietary bamboo lyocell.

Other PLNTmatter products mimic less sustainable fabrics, including silk, cashmere, and a linen-like material made with hemp. The company also sells the world’s first biodegradable elastic, Dey said, made with natural rubber and CleanBamboo® yarns.

Why bamboo?

It’s a grass that:

Grows quickly, relies mostly on rainfall over commercial irrigation, and requires no pesticides.
Sequesters carbon dioxide, potentially reducing climate change.
Is fire-resistant due to its high silica content and can act as a natural fire break in the event of a wildfire.

And though the fabric isn’t antimicrobial as often claimed because the textile-making process removes those properties, they can be replaced by infusing another ingredient, such as a bamboo charcoal.

What’s next?

In addition to Ettitude’s products, PLNTmatter has ~100 companies in the sample stage seeing how they might incorporate its textiles.

Price-wise, Dey said they can’t compete with polyester, but they’re already on par or cheaper than some natural materials, including cashmere, wool, and silk, and are working on new technologies to make materials even more affordable.

Fun fact: According to a clinical study Ettitude commissioned, its sheets garnered sleepers an extra 43 hours per year. That’s why they’re HSA/FSA eligible.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Drowning in Slack threads and spreadsheets? Here’s a process map that saved one HubSpot team 800 hours of labor.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

How many years companies have been relying on e-learning and video models for employee training. Despite spending a collective ~$400B on the courses annually, 74% of employers say their workers are falling short of the skills required for their business, according to a recent workplace study via Inc.

AI startup D-ID is hoping to change that with its interactive “agentic videos,” which allow workers to query and converse with a digital avatar instead of zoning out in front of their screens. According to a 2026 report, interactive live training formats see 85%-95% completion rates, compared to just 12%-15% for self-paced old-school ones — a win-win for cash-draining companies and bored employees.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1993, the World Wide Web’s source code became public domain.

🎙️ History: An archive of music magazine NME.

📰 Newsletter: Subscribe to Quartz Obsession for deep dives into the hidden history of everyday things.

🏠 That’s interesting: From Dezeen, eight houses with unique roofs.

🎣 Aww: Thanks for all the fish.

SHOWER THOUGHT

You never experience yourself in the same way as others, but that version of yourself is the only one that exists in society. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.

Editing by: Sara "Oh sheet" Friedman.

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