Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
GenAI is raising the stakes in managing a global workforce; trust and speed are emerging as decisive, EY research finds | EY – Global
72% of mobility teams are scaling GenAI and agentic AI to improve speed and consistency, but just 51% of functions trust that their data is accurate to move to the next phase.
Edtech’s pandemic boom is over as K-12 startup funding craters – Rest of World
Global edtech investment peaked at $16.7 billion in 2021, fueled by lockdowns that kept millions of children out of classrooms. By 2025, venture capital had plummeted to less than $3 billion, according to Tracxn, a Bengaluru-based platform that tracks global startup funding.
Why the Best Startups Look Stupid at First | by Gil Pignol | Mar, 2026 | Medium
The question that should haunt every founder and VC: how do you distinguish “stupid-good” from “stupid-stupid”?The difference isn’t boldness or contrarianism. Theranos was bold. WeWork was contrarian. Both destroyed capital. The difference lies in whether the obstacle blocking the idea is solvable through design or fundamental to physics and economics.
You probably wouldn’t notice if an AI chatbot slipped ads into its responses
We are computer scientists who have been tracking AI safety and privacy for several years. In a study we published in an Association for Computing Machinery journal, we found that chatbots trained to embed personalized product ads in replies to queries influenced people’s choices about products. And most participants didn’t recognize that they were being manipulated.
Agents can’t choose between structure and flexibility
I think it’s safe to say that when the LLM hype cycle started a few years ago, no one expected one of the great debates of our time would be between Python and Markdown as agent specification languages. But here we are, and this has quickly turned into one of the most consequential architectural questions in AI.
The IPO Pipeline Finally Gets Interesting
By this latter measure, the past few weeks have been pretty busy for venture-backed startups. Cerebras Systems, the designer of speedy AI inference chips, filed publicly last week for an offering expected to raise around $2 billion. The Silicon Valley company, which withdrew plans for an IPO last fall, is reportedly seeking a valuation upwards of $35 billion this time around. That alone would be enough to set IPO market watchers abuzz. Per Crunchbase data, it stands to be the largest initial share offering of a U.S. semiconductor company to date.
The Rise of the Probabilistic Founder – by Dan Nguyen-Huu
They are experimental by default. They are willing to abandon their priors. They’d rather run ten cheap experiments than commit to one expensive plan. Their iteration cycles are measured in days, not quarters. And (this is the part that would have been a red flag two years ago and is now a tell that they’ve read the environment correctly), their roadmaps are deliberately, almost defiantly, light.
Biamp turns 50
When bassist Norm Sundholm struggled to make his instrument heard over the roar of the crowd, his brother Conrad stepped in to help. The result was a hand-built amplifier powerful enough to fill the room — and the birth of a movement.
More Oregon startup news
