Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 2, 2026

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Startup Coffee Meetups, Thu, Oct 8, 2026, 9:00 AM | Meetup

Join us for fresh coffee, fresh connections, and the kind of conversations that can spark your next big idea. No pitches, no pressure, and no need to have everything figured out. Just bring your questions, your curiosity, and your entrepreneurial energy. 📅 Second Thursday of every month

Why Jeff Swickard bought Big Pink and other downtown buildings – Portland Business Journal

The high-profile purchases have, in record time, positioned Swickard as a prominent player in Portland’s commercial real estate market and in efforts to revitalize downtown. Asked about his guiding strategy, Swickard insists there isn’t much of one beyond his affection for Portland and his deeply rooted belief that the city’s best days are ahead.

(2017) Thinking out loud about the Portland startup community

I recently had the opportunity to appear on OPB for Think Out Loud. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I don’t put people to sleep while babbling about the Portland startup community. Not only did the host stay awake, but several listeners did, as well. Several.

Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents? – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering

As bad as these events were, they may be just the tip of the iceberg. Third-party forensic work continues to turn up even more evidence of agent activity on various public websites. OpenAI’s Alignment group has also released evidence that models will propagate self-replicating prompt injection attacks, although we haven’t seen one in the wild. Worse, agent excursions are still happening: last week, OpenAI announced that it was pausing further RL runs of its latest internal model, after an agent was caught using DNS to access a remote chatbot.

California governor vetoes bill banning use of ‘pervert glasses’ to secretly record people | TechCrunch

Newsom said in a letter to lawmakers on Wednesday that he declined to sign the draft law, California Senate Bill 1130, on grounds that it defines wearable recording devices as “too broadly or imprecisely” and that this could lead to confusion and unintended consequences. Newsom added that the proposed bill also includes protections that already exist in California’s law.

The eternal complement | OpenAI

Nick Bloom and his coauthors⁠(opens in a new window) studied research productivity across the American economy. Sustaining Moore’s law now requires more than eighteen times as many researchers as it did in the early 1970s. Economy-wide effective research effort rose twenty-three-fold from the 1930s, while measured research productivity fell by a factor of forty-one.

Oregon’s fastest-growing colleges and universities by revenue, 2026 – Portland Business Journal

The fastest-growing institution was Reed College in Southeast Portland, having grown by 108% over the most recent available five years, though it only has a student body of less than 1,500.

Beaverton’s Fly Chai wants to start a chai cafe trend – Portland Business Journal

“The challenge is, I have a really large lease space. I have a 2,000-square-foot location. I have to make sure I sell 200 cups, ideally, every day to make sure I’m profitable,” he said. As he raises awareness of the shop, he is hoping to drive traffic to the store and his website, where he sells packages of the chai that people can brew at home.

Fintech Is Dead: How AI and Tokens Are Reshaping Finance

Every assumption that made fintech different a decade ago- mobile-first, cloud, and an API instead of a branch- is now table stakes for every financial company on earth. When the assumptions win, the category stops being what’s next; it’s what’s now.

Now Is Not the Time to Increase Your Burn Rate — Chris Neumann

When it seems like investor capital is virtually unlimited is exactly when we make decisions that we wouldn’t otherwise make (especially if we knew that there was no more capital available). And right now a lot of founders are making such decisions, only to find out that the well has run dry.

World’s first enhanced geothermal power plant completed in just 23 months | TechCrunch

That sort of speed to power should appeal to power-starved data center operators, who have been scouring every part of the energy sector for generating capacity. Geothermal can also be developed in phases, similar to how data centers are developed, allowing hyperscalers to bring racks online as demand ramps up.

#StartupsEverywhere: Santa Clara, CA — ENGINE

Santa Clara-based startup Xscape Photonics is revolutionizing AI data center connectivity by developing multicolor silicon photonic lasers that drastically improve data center transmission efficiency. The company uses multicolor lasers to increase the speed of data transfer between chips and utilize the full capacity of existing chips, ultimately making data centers and other networked servers more efficient. We sat down with co-founder and CEO Vivek Raghunathan to discuss innovation coming out of the academic and research world, turning that innovation into a product for the market, how the government can support deep-tech startups, and his experience fundraising.

First Oregon Governor’s Debate Gets Feisty — Oregon Journalism Project

At the first gubernatorial debate of 2026, Gov. Tina Kotek and Republican challenger Christine Drazan both said they believe Oregonians are struggling but for different reasons—with the incumbent blaming President Donald Trump and the state senator blaming Gov. Kotek.

What Gold Beach Built Around Barnacle Bistro

The Oregon Main Street Revitalization Grant is a competitive statewide program administered through Oregon Heritage that funds building renovation and revitalization in historic commercial districts. Gold Beach Main Street, the local nonprofit that has been building toward this kind of project since 2015, applied on Barnacle Bistro’s behalf. Out of 76 applications submitted statewide, 35 were selected. Gold Beach was one of them, and Barnacle Bistro became the fourth local business to receive the grant through the program.