Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
To turn around Oregon, start with the hard conversation • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Rather than debate the merits of various rankings, let’s focus on the underlying realities they reveal. We urge leaders to stay focused on the urgency of the moment and demonstrate the discipline to implement the Governor’s call to action which includes prosperity for children and families.
I Reverse-Engineered 200 AI Startups. 73% Are Lying | Towards AI
Last month, I went down a rabbit hole that started with a simple question and ended with me questioning everything I thought I knew about the AI startup ecosystem.
The gentle obsolescence – by Benn Stancil – benn.substack
It isn’t about AI alignment, or the probability of doom. It is a simple, practical observation: It’s better than me at most things, and I don’t know how to keep up.
Beyond AI: 5 Startup Sectors Seeing Big Funding Growth
Last year, AI grabbed half of venture dollars globally. But the sector’s blockbuster growth hasn’t necessarily come at the expense of other startup industries. Rather, areas that benefit from AI-driven automation such as legal tech, or that combine AI software with physical tech, like robotics and defense tech, are seeing record-high funding levels as well, Crunchbase data shows.
The Incompetent Confidence Complex – by Kyle Harrison
Competence is a function of iteration. Whether you frame it as getting your 10K hours or building pattern recognition or whatever cliche. It’s as simple as practice, practice, practice.
The Anthropic Hive Mind. As you’ve probably noticed, something… | by Steve Yegge | Feb, 2026 | Medium
Anthropic is unusually impenetrable as a company. Employees there all know they just need to keep their mouths shut and heads down and they’ll be billionaires and beyond, so they have lots of incentive to do exactly that. It’s tricky to get them to open up, even when they do chat with you.
I hope I’m wrong, but this is why I fear the Trail Blazers could be as good as gone | Bill Oram – oregonlive.com
That doesn’t mean it’s too late to save the Trail Blazers, to permanently anchor them in the city that birthed them, that hoisted Jack Ramsay on its shoulders amid a parade down Broadway, but it’s going to take a more unified effort than we have seen so far.
Meet the Inaugural Cohort of Built Oregon’s Retail Performance Accelerator | by Katharine Reinhold | Built Oregon | Feb, 2026 | Medium
The program runs from February 25 through the end of April 2026, providing structured curriculum, mentorship, and — critically — connections within Oregon’s retail landscape.
Seattle startup uses clinical expertise to make AI models safer and reduce dangerous responses – GeekWire
The company, founded in 2021 in a bid to bring more empathy to corporate communication, announced Monday that it is expanding to support foundational model developers and LLM-powered application teams.
More Oregon startup news
