Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The Moat | Build a Defensible Business Through Human-Centric CX | Jennifer Courchaine
The era of the product moat is over. In a world where AI can replicate code, clone features, and automate support in seconds, the traditional differentiators that built venture-scale businesses are vanishing. If you rely on your product to keep your customers, you are building on sand.
Eventship Playing Role of Professional Matchmaker – San Diego Business Journal
Eventship’s immediate growth plans outside of San Diego are focused on the Pacific Northwest, where the startup is working with the organizers of Portland Startup Week.
Where the goblins came from | OpenAI
Starting with GPT‑5.1, our models began developing a strange habit: they increasingly mentioned goblins, gremlins, and other creatures in their metaphors. Unlike model bugs that show up through a tanking eval or a spiking training metric and point back to a specific change, this one crept in subtly. A single “little goblin” in an answer could be harmless, even charming. Across model generations, though, the habit became hard to miss: the goblins kept multiplying, and we needed to figure out where they came from.
Millionaire taxes gain steam as states face budget crunches • Oregon Capital Chronicle
The idea is gaining traction as lawmakers in at least a dozen states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia, have proposed new taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers. In California, advocates this week announced they gathered enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires. But these proposals often stir yearslong battles.
Get To Know The Latest Class Of Ultra-Fast Fundraising Unicorns
Of those, more than a third first secured 10-figure valuations at seed or early stage. That includes some of the most well-known newish unicorns in sectors like foundational AI, robotics and vertical AI.
EV charging startup Rocsys raises $13M for robotaxi charging bay – Portland Business Journal
Electric vehicle charging company Rocsys, which has its North American headquarters in Portland, raised another $13 million from investors to support its latest automated charging system.
The $112 Billion Quarter | Tomasz Tunguz
The divergence is striking. AWS & Azure resell compute. Google bundles compute with its own models. Whether that explains the full gap is unclear, but the structural advantage is not : Google owns Gemini & TPUs top to bottom, with no licensing fees to OpenAI or Anthropic. Its growth may be more profitable too.
Portland names Latricia Tillman chief equity officer – Portland Business Journal
Tillman, who is a fourth-generation Oregonian, was most recently senior equity and policy strategist at public affairs consulting firm Espousal Strategies. Her career also includes equity and inclusion leadership roles with Washington County, the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Housing and Community Services. She was also previously public health division director at Multnomah County.
Oregon adopts tax credit to spur de novo bank formation | ABA Banking Journal
House Bill 4052, signed into law by Gov. Tina Kotek, allows qualifying de novo banks to receive up to $1 million annually in state tax credits for three consecutive years, helping offset the significant startup costs associated with organizing a new bank, the association said. Oregon is the second state to adopt such an incentive, after Ohio.
TAO Executive Brief (Apr 2026)
Since the start of the short legislative session earlier this year, TAO has been tracking and flagging hundreds of bills for our members, providing testimony, and engaging with policymakers. We have been heavily involved in shaping new workforce strategies, advocating for the importance of clear, relevant education attainment goals to Oregon’s economy, providing input to the Governor’s Data Center Task Force and the Oregon Prosperity Council, and yes, lobbying for a fix to SB 1507.
