Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 22, 2026

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

Unemployed Tech Worker Potluck, Fri, Oct 2, 2026, 4:00 PM | Meetup

Enjoy an end-of-summer potluck picnic with your fellow tech workers in Noble Woods Park. Bring something for yourself and something to share.

(2014) How accessible is startup funding in Oregon? University of Oregon releases Oregon Capital Scan: A Line is Drawn

Over the past few years, the chorus of Portland tech startups bemoaning a lack of access to capital has receded a bit. Because some of the problem that plagued startups of previous generations has been resolved with local funding resources. And a great deal more has been resolved by companies finding capital outside of the state. But what is the availability of capital in Oregon, these days? Is it improving? The Oregon Capital Scan aims to answer that question.

Governor Newsom signs most comprehensive data center laws in the nation, providing communities more control on water, electricity, and land use | Governor of California

As Donald Trump dismisses Americans’ concerns about the growing emergence of data centers in their communities, California is enacting new laws to increase transparency and prevent working families from shouldering the costs. The laws give communities more information about energy, water, workforce, and land use for proposed data centers so they can better weigh the economic costs and benefits of such projects.

Attention is all you have

The internet wasn’t always like that. Before recommendation algorithms were a thing, you had to decide what you would be doing on the computer.

Portland’s Best Old Flames

Although Rachelle Menashe only began tailoring devotional candles for PDX punk icons six years ago, as part of the memorial for beloved Satyricon presence Bruno Berger, her first experiences with prayer candles burn bright in childhood memories. Menashe, who once owned the influential ’90s venue Suburbia and played in the legendary garage trio Frances Farmer Gals, was never particularly religious.

The current balance of power in open models

I was recently invited to brief a group of Congressional members and staff on the state of open-weight models in the lens of U.S.-China competition. I’m sharing my prepared remarks as a state of the union on open models that is accessible to a broader audience.

AI Comes for the If Statement | Tomasz Tunguz

The newest wave of AI is a robust if-then decider. Jev & SemIf answer questions like these in hundreds of milliseconds at a 99% reduction in cost compared to traditional AI. They simplify the existing models by running the attention math once & then determining the probability of each allowed answer, based on a few tokens of output.

Agility Robotics: Inside the First US Humanoid Company to Go Public

The key question for the business will be about the Digit v5 launch and whether their RaaS offering takes off over the next year with real deployments that start to scale.

October: Co-Work with OEN

Oregon Entrepreneurs Network is partnering with our friends at White Summers, Human Interest, and WeWork to host Co-Work with OEN on Wednesday, October 7th from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm at WeWork in NE Portland.

A goose that lays golden eggs is going to cost you more than pennies

Looking at everything they want, which includes developing a self-guided curriculum on how to develop a social enterprise for practitioners who, by definition, are not yet very savvy when it comes to running their core offerings as actual social businesses; consultations with numerous stakeholders; and preparing a comprehensive literature review, a realistic estimate is 30 days of work.

A small but growing number of founders are betting on bringing people together offline | TechCrunch

The timing isn’t accidental. In June of last year, the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection formally classified loneliness as a defining global health challenge, estimating that one in six people worldwide are affected and linking the condition to roughly 870,000 deaths a year.

1803 Fund shows progress rebuilding Black Portland neighborhood – Portland Business Journal

1803 Fund has spent the last few years acquiring property in Northeast Portland, much of which was previously home to Black Portlanders who were displaced when more than 500 homes were bulldozed in the lower Albina Neighborhood in the name of urban renewal in the 1950s and ’60s.