Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Oregon Prosperity Council pushes tax reform, regulation cuts – Portland Business Journal
Gov. Tina Kotek’s Prosperity Council on Thursday delivered its final recommendations for ways to boost Oregon’s economic competitiveness, with tax reform and cuts to regulations topping a lengthy list that drew on six months of meetings and listening sessions around the state.
New group aims to help people adapt to AI job losses | AP News
Among the companies serving as anchor partners with RAISE US are Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, the OpenAI Foundation and Bank of America. Other employers involved in the project include UPS, General Motors, Eli Lilly, Mastercard, chipmaker AMD, Cisco and IBM.
Blogging Can Just Be Stating The Obvious – Jim Nielsen’s Blog
So it must be that a key ingredient to blogging is simple: have a willingness to state something that seems obvious to you but nobody else is saying it.
Notes on Amazon v. Perplexity
One of the many sites of conflict over AI use on the Internet is about the use of “agentic” Web browsers: those that incorporate AI features where the user can give the AI instructions and then let it interact with the site independently. For example, you might ask your browser to book travel and it would then go to travel sites, look at the various flights, and eventually buy tickets.
Cursor Deal Puts US On Track For Record Startup M&A Year
The Cursor purchase represents the largest startup acquisition of all time, nearly double the size of the prior frontrunner, Google’s purchase of Wiz for $32 billion. After that, the next-biggest startup M&A deal was Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014.
Agility Robotics plans to go public via SPAC in a $2.5B deal | TechCrunch
The transaction is expected to generate more than $620 million in proceeds, including about $200 million from a group of new and existing institutional investors, the company said.
What I’m Finding About LLM Code Style and Token Costs – Jim Montgomery jimmont.com
In trying to make progress on something I am finding myself reviewing my practice and looking at where that outrageous token usage is coming from. Every one of those is output tokens, the ones that cost several times more (3x to 5x!!!) than input tokens in API pricing. Patterns that are longer, more fragile, more insecure, and solving problems the platform already solved–often years ago.
What to know about Agility Robotics’ SPAC plans – Portland Business Journal
The company could mean big things for the state’s tech sector because it is an example of physical AI that applies advanced software in the physical world through robotics.
🎧🍌 Why Pre-Seed Investing Has Never Been Harder | Charles Hudson, Precursor Ventures
Ten years and hundreds of Day 0 checks later, few investors have backed as many first-time founders, making him the perfect person to talk through the state of Pre-Seed investing today.
Oregon Entrepreneurs Network: July PubTalk
We’re teaming up with our friends Miller Nash for the July PubTalk on Wednesday, July 8th at 5:00 p.m. at their beautiful offices in downtown Portland.
The State of Play for Female VCs: A fireside chat with Paige Hendrix Buckner & Leslie Feinzaig · Zoom · Luma
Join us for a candid fireside with Paige and Graham & Walker’s Leslie Feinzaig on the real state of play for female VCs in 2026. We’ll get into the numbers, the dynamics inside firms, the funding gaps that persist, and what actually moves the needle.
UpStart Collective is turning 4! · Luma
Join founders, investors, operators, community leaders, and friends as we raise a glass to four amazing years, celebrate the incredible companies being built here, and look ahead to what’s next for Portland’s startup community.