--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for June 1, 2026' date: '2026-06-01T12:51:22-07:00' type: post word_count: 1489 char_count: 13381 tokens: 1936 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for June 1, 2026 Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today: [What the Oregon Community Can Do to Support Startups](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-oregon-community-can-do-support-startups-michael-ulin-lxvac/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But the longer we talked, the more the conversation tilted toward the other side of the ledger. Because for all its rough edges, Oregon has one of the most generous, show-up-for-each-other startup communities I’ve ever been part of. People answer the cold email. They make the intro. They drive across the mountains for a panel on a weeknight. That’s not nothing. That’s actually rare. [AGI Needs Formal Reasoning. Carina Hong is Building it at Axiom.](https://www.madrona.com/agi-needs-formal-reasoning-carina-hong-is-building-it-at-axiom/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this conversation with Matt McIlwain, Carina explains her central thesis: that math and code are the two pillars of the digital world, and that any AI infrastructure missing a formal verification layer is structurally incomplete. She walks through the history of verified AI research at Google, DeepMind, OpenAI, and Meta, and explains why each effort stalled just as commercial pressure mounted. She describes what makes hardware and software verification the natural first commercial market, and what Axiom discovered when they tested their prover against circuits that industry-standard formal checkers could not verify. [Intel details long-awaited Crescent Island AI GPU at Computex, boasts up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X to combat memory shortages — company shares more details of its Xe3P inference accelerator at Computex | Tom’s Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/intel-details-long-awaited-crescent-island-ai-gpu-at-computex-boasts-up-to-480-gb-of-lpddr5x-to-combat-memory-shortages-company-shares-more-details-of-its-xe3p-inference-accelerator-at-computex) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Crescent Island GPU will be built on Intel’s Xe3P GPU architecture. Intel says this architecture is “built for agentic AI,” and it supports a broad range of potential data types, from FP4 for high-performance AI inference all the way up to FP64, potentially for scientific computing applications. Intel isn’t providing any raw throughput specs at this stage of Crescent Island’s development, so we can’t make any guesses about its compute performance. [Season 2 Finale: The Rebuttal – by Mike Schmidt](https://www.schmidtshowpdx.com/p/season-2-finale-the-rebuttal) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- City Councilor Angelita Morillo — First term District 3 representative and proud DSA member, comes into studio to respond. She doesn’t just push back on the argument. She makes her case, point by point, with data, personal experience, and insight into the day to day of actually doing the work. [America Has a Pangram Problem – The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/pangram-ai-detection-accuracy/687381/?gift=NBdGSmKfDQzLc1B6N1F-gasbcqKrczuquHjg4eErYvw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yet an AI detector that is mostly reliable might in some ways be more dangerous than a broken one. While Pangram is accumulating the power to end reputations and careers, the tool does make mistakes, perhaps to a greater extent than is currently understood. In turn, AI accusations could very quickly spiral into a witch hunt. [No Raise, No Promotion: 1 in 4 White-Collar Workers Are Stalling Out – WSJ](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/white-collar-workers-career-nyu-study-a81a7d9c) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No promotion. No notable raises. Not yet 40. You aren’t alone. [‘Light rail to nowhere’? Surging costs undercut I-5 bridge transit plan • Oregon Capital Chronicle](https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/05/29/repub/light-rail-to-nowhere-surging-costs-undercut-i-5-bridge-transit-plan/?emci=57a3241d-bd5d-f111-8fcb-000d3a18905c&emdi=4f04183c-c25d-f111-8fcb-000d3a18905c&ceid=435409) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “There is no money to build light rail in the existing funding. That is the budget reality,” Aho said. “As we made clear at the press conference with the mayor, we will continue to fight for more funding. We appreciate the partnership of the mayor and the city.” [How I Raised $14M For My Startup When I Stopped Pitching And Started Speaking](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/startup-founder-building-personal-connections-fundraise-vandervorm-clyx/?utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20260601&utm_content=intro&utm_term=content&utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20230703) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every meaningful check in our $14 million round came from a personal encounter. A talk I gave. A dinner I attended. A conference I almost didn’t go to. If there’s a single lesson I’d want every first-time founder to take from my fundraising experience, it’s this: stop optimizing your outreach and start engineering the rooms you’re in. [What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #500](https://www.whatshotit.vc/p/whats-in-enterprise-itvc-500?utm_source=tldrfounders) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Measuring tokens consumed is measuring effort, not output, and it’s the same mistake enterprises made a decade ago measuring lines of code or hours logged. You get what you measure, and if you measure tokens, you’ll get engineers finding creative ways to burn them. [Your Customers’ AI Agents Are Coming for Your Data. Are You Ready? – Fintech Takes](https://fintechtakes.com/articles/2026-05-29/your-customers-ai-agents-are-coming-for-your-data-are-you-ready/?utm_source=tldrfounders) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The differentiation will come from the data that empowers those models. Data determines the quality of the experiences you can build on top of them, the accuracy of the answers they can give, and the breadth of what they can act on. [Weekly Review: The Cost of Capable – by Sam Keen](https://writing.alteredcraft.com/p/weekly-review-the-cost-of-capable) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last week we marked the capability threshold; this week the questions turn economic. Simon Willison calls April 2026 the moment coding agents found product-market fit, even as open and specialized models put a ceiling under frontier pricing. The tutorials and tools cover building, securing, and harnessing agents, while the editorials weigh what capability now costs and what judgment stays yours. [Backpressure is all you need](https://www.lucasfcosta.com/blog/backpressure-is-all-you-need) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this post, I’ll cover a third, not-so-obvious approach: building ways for the agent to validate more of its own work before a human has to step in. The goal to make longer unattended sessions safe enough to be useful without fully removing the human from the loop. It should also reduce the number of low-quality PRs your teammates have to review for details the agent should have caught itself. [Things I Think I Think… The New Internet Era](https://blogs.newardassociates.com/blog/2026/titit-llms-and-internet.html) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before I continue on, I’d like to point out that this is not the first time the industry has responded to a new technology by seeking to create a top-level C-suite role for it and then turning to that individual and saying, “Go on! Make it happen!” At the turn of the previous century, the world saw the emergence of the Chief Electricity Officer, a role designed to bring the company in line with the burgeoning field of “electricity”. [Mentorship Saturdays @ Roseline Coffee & Online, Sat, Jun 6, 2026, 10:00 AM | Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/mentorship-saturdays/events/314341146/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=seven_day_v6&dispatch_id=6a1c7a4aefb33a287f550b3548b2dd55) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roseline Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. Drink some coffee, bring your laptop, and have engaging conversations. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, ask for advice or even work on your resume. You will likely find us on the couches Still uncertain? Let’s chat on Discord! [Oregon Disconnects — The Real Cost of Oregon’s Data Center Boom](https://www.oregondisconnects.com/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For every claim made by the data center industry, there’s a community bearing a real cost. Here’s what the industry-funded studies leave out. [Ice cream chain Salt & Straw explores sale, sources say | Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/ice-cream-chain-salt-straw-explores-sale-sources-say-2026-05-29/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ice cream chain Salt & Straw, known for its quirky, small-batch flavors such as salty donut guava and cheese, is ​exploring a sale that could value the company at over $200 ​million, according to three people familiar with the matter. [A rational conversation on where AI is actually going | Benedict Evans](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a-rational-conversation-on-where) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benedict Evans on why AI is a 1997 internet moment, what everyone gets wrong about job loss, and where the real value may accrue [$1B ocean data center powered by waves wins backing from Peter Thiel](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/1b-ocean-data-center-powered-by-waves-wins-backing-from-peter-thiel/ar-AA24rqWB) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imagine a steel tower nearly as tall as Big Ben, floating silently in the open Pacific, running AI at full speed without burning a single drop of fossil fuel. That is not a concept sketch. That is what Oregon-based startup Panthalassa is building right now, and it just secured $140 million in Series B funding led by Peter Thiel, valuing the company at close to $1 billion. The ocean, once a barrier, is now a power source. [Some thoughts on Nectome’s long-term stability](https://articles.nectome.com/p/some-thoughts-on-nectomes-long-term) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We’ve taken care to operate within a convenient and sensible legal jurisdiction. This is why we’re based in Oregon, even though I anticipate many of our early clients will be from California. Oregon’s medical aid-in-dying (MAiD) law is the oldest in the US and enjoys a strong local base of support.