Rocket launches, Wooly Mammoths, the TikTok roller coaster, Deepseek and more!
ikigai Insights #1
Hey everyone, welcome to the 1st edition of ikigai Insights, a newsletter by 886 Studios!
My name is Carter, I’m from Southern California, and an associate here at 886 Studios. In this monthly newsletter, I, along with my team, will be sharing the latest and greatest tech & startup news stories that we’re following, hidden gems from around the internet, a window into what we’re doing at 886 Studios & with our ikigai Launchpad accelerator, fresh takes from us, and more!
Our goal with ikigai Insights is to pierce through the noise and bring you the stories, ideas, and insights that keeps you informed, sparks curiosity, makes you think, and maybe even makes you laugh! This won’t be your typical corporate email, it’s a newsletter you’ll actually enjoy reading. So join us and subscribe, it’s free!
First off, I want to briefly share more about who we are and what’s brewing at 886 Studios.
For those of you who aren’t familar, 886 Studios is a venture firm in Taipei, here to help founders across the globe take their bold ideas and turn them into global successes. Started by a crew of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who’ve built companies like Twitch, Guitar Hero, Playdom, HTC Vive, Taipei Kings, and Kabam, we know what it takes to build impactful companies, and we’re here to share that experience.
That’s why we created ikigai Launchpad - an accelerator designed to supercharge founders and accelerate their growth.
Last October, we launched our inaugural batch, officially kicking off our accelerator journey here in Taipei.
We’re building something special: an accelerator rooted in the values and best practices of Silicon Valley, but here in the heart of Taiwan, and we are excited to announce the early-bird applications for the next batch in Summer 2025, are now OPEN!
We are accepting applications on a rolling basis so don’t wait, apply soon!
If you want to learn more, check out our website.
…and now, on to the news!
🚨Top Stories of the Month🚨
A curated selection of impactful, interesting, and fun news
📰 Around the World 📰
On January 16, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, successfully reached orbit with its rocket, New Glenn, for the first time ever since its founding in 2000. New Glenn is a large, reusable rocket meant to carry a huge amount of satellites into orbit. This accomplishment marked a new era for Blue Origin, introducing it as a direct competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in the rapidly growing space launch market. (Blue Origin)
New Glenn has also been tapped to help launch Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband internet satellites, which could become a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation. Amazon already has a license to launch over 3,000 Kuiper satellites (SPACE.com)
TikTok went dark in the US after failing to sell it’s operations to a US company due to a law that required ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to divest TikTok or face a national ban. However, per a Trump executive order, the app’s ban has been delayed for 75 days so Bytedance could have more time to find a U.S. buyer. It’s now back online but time is ticking! Microsoft, Oracle, Mr. Beast, Larry Eliason, Perplexity AI, and Mr. Beast have all been rumored to be potential buyers for TikTok’s U.S. operations.
Colossal Biosciences, the company that’s famously on a mission to bring back the woolly mammoth and two other extinct species, has raised a $200 million Series C at a $10.2 billion valuation. The company claims it has made significant breakthroughs on each of its main projects: resurrecting the Wooly Mammoth, Dodo bird, and Tasmanian tiger. Their approach in resurrecting these extinct animals, involves mapping the entire genome of the species and then comparing it to their closest living relative (in the mammoth’s case, it’d be the Asian elephant), then using the gene-editing tool, CRISPR, to edit the cells. In the last step, those cells will be put into an egg cell, and the embryo will be implanted into an elephant, which will hopefully give birth to a baby mammoth. To do this, they are building out various technologies, including artificial wombs, and it is there in the process of building resurrection technology, where investors believe the value lies. (TechCrunch)
A ton of announcements from OpenAI
Stargate - OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle announced "The Stargate Project”, a $500 billion investment in U.S. AI infrastructure. The venture will immediately deploy an initial $100 billion, starting with massive data centers in Texas before expanding nationwide. If the Stargate Project follows through with the $500B, it will go down as the largest infrastructure spend in history and significantly accelerate the already startling pace of data center development post-ChatGPT.
Operator - OpenAI released an agent that can go to the web and perform tasks for the user. Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling. Operator acts as an agent for receptive tasks and can perform actions autonomously like buying movie tickets, filling out forms, ordering groceries, and more. It is currently a research preview and available to try at operator.chatgpt.com in the US. (OpenAI)
Extra Reading: We Tried OpenAI’s New Agent—Here’s What We Found (Every)
Deep Research - On February 2, 2025, OpenAI announced the launch of "Deep Research, an AI agent integrated within ChatGPT. This new feature is designed to conduct extensive, multi-step research autonomously, leveraging the internet to find, analyze, and synthesize information from hundreds of online sources. OpenAI writes that you simply “give it a prompt and ChatGPT will find, analyze & synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report in tens of minutes vs what would take a human many hours.” Deep Research is powered by a specialized version of OpenAI's latest AI model, o3.
Deepseek, a Chinese AI startup, has recently shaken up the tech world with its open-sourced AI model, R1. This model nearly matches the performance of leading American AI models but was developed at a fraction of the cost of around $5.6 million, or so they claim (Note: SemiAnalysis has reported that Deepseek has actually spent over $500M on GPUs w/ a capex spend of $1.6B). This resulted in an explosion of attention triggering a selloff in AI & big tech stocks. Nvidia, the AI industry’s powerhouse, suffered the largest single day valuation decrease ever of $600 billion, as investors grappled with the potential for lower-cost AI models to disrupt the landscape. At the time of writing, the Deepseek app is #1 on the US App Store.
Extra Reading: Here is a helpful analysis from Stratechery by Ben Thompson.
More extra Reading: Another great analysis from Semianalysis.
Boom Supersonic, a US aerospace startup founded in 2014 by Blake Scholl and backed by YC, is working to bring back supersonic commercial air travel, something that hasn't been seen since the Concorde was retired in 2003. In January, Boom’s XB-1 jet, successfully flew at supersonic speeds reaching Mach 1.222 and breaking the sound barrier. This was the first time an independently developed jet had done so. “XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived,” said Boom CEO Blake Scholl. “A small band of talented and dedicated engineers has accomplished what previously took governments and billions of dollars. Next, we are scaling up the technology on XB-1 for the Overture supersonic airliner. Our ultimate goal is to bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone.” (Boom)
🇹🇼 In Taiwan 🇹🇼
Nvidia backs MetAI, a Taiwanese startup that creates AI-powered digital twins (TechCrunch)
Ministry lifts overseas limits on TSMC (Taipei Times)
Nvidia eyes Taipei for Taiwan headquarters (Taiwan News)
Google buys part of HTC’s XR business for $250M (TechCrunch)
Taiwan launches overseas tech startup hub in Silicon Valley (Taipei Times)
Taiwan's first lunar mission successfully launched (Focus Taiwan)
Cabinet approves new Silicon Valley plan for southern Taiwan (Focus Taiwan)
🗞️ More News 🗞️
Microsoft to Spend $80 Billion on AI Data Centers This Year (Bloomberg)
Amazon bought more renewable power last year than any other company (TechCrunch)
Nintendo unveils the Switch 2 (Nintendo)
More Speech and Fewer Mistakes (Meta)
SpaceX launched its 7th Test Flight for its flagship Starship rocket (SpaceX)
Nvidia Accelerates Humanoid Robotics Development (Nvidia)
Trump launched a meme coin and it became worth $72 billion overnight (Axios)
Databricks closes a $10B Series J funding round at a $62B valuation (TechCrunch)
Announcing Helion’s $425 million Series F (Helion)
Trump signs executive order promoting crypto, paving way for digital asset stockpile (CNBC)
Google expects to spend $75 billion this year on the AI race (The Verge)
X Partners with Visa for the launch of its X Money account (X)
ElevenLabs Raises $180M in Series C Funding (X)
📋 The Bulletin 📋
Our top picks from around the web.
Reading 📖
I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life - by Vinay Hiremath (co-founder of Loom)
Reflections - by Sam Altman (Co-Founder & CEO of OpenAI)
The Short Case for Nvidia Stock - by Jeffrey Emanuel
On Deepseek and Export Controls - by Dario Amodie (Co-founder & CEO of Antrhropic)
What’s in your stack: The state of tech tools in 2025 - from Lenny’s Newsletter
TikTok is just the beginning - Noahpinion by Noah Smith
Design Literacy - by William Van Lecker
Prophecies of the Flood - by Ethan Mollick (One Useful Thing)
Podcasts 🎧
Satya Nadella - BG2 w/ Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner (Spotify)
The Naval Podcast - Naval Ravikant with BeerBiceps (YouTube)
#780: Cyan Banister - From Homeless and Broke to Top Angel Investor (Uber, SpaceX, and 100+ more) - The Tim Ferris Show (Spotify)
#2255 - Mark Zuckerberg - The Joe Rogan Experience (Spotify)
Wait but Why - Tim Urban - Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris (Spotify)
Thanks for reading and see you soon!
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