Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The Sports Bra founder Jenny Nguyen wins top entrepreneurship award – Portland Business Journal
Startups in semiconductors, health tech and housing, all major themes in the regional economy, took home top entrepreneurial awards on Thursday.
Lawmakers to discuss ‘painful’ cuts for Oregon agencies under $373 million deficit • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Potential cuts across state agencies could mean service reductions for Oregonians and more work for current employees
Google and Oregon’s Leading Innovation Partners Launch Oregon AI Accelerator to Fuel the Next Wave of AI Entrepreneurship | Oregon AI Accelerator Press
A collaborative initiative uniting Oregon’s top tech organizations, investors, and universities to launch AI startups
Vancouver startup backed by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says its chiplets cut AI power needs by more than half – oregonlive.com
PowerLattice could bring a little of that AI activity to the Portland area. The company employs about 20, split between Washington and Arizona. PowerLattice recently moved its headquarters from Camas, where Zou lives, to an office in east Vancouver with more room to grow. Two of the three founders work in the Vancouver headquarters.
Jackie Merlos launches podcast after months in ICE detention – Portland Business Journal
Merlos and Lettunich are preparing to launch both a podcast to talk about immigration issues and share stories like Jackie’s and an interactive web platform to aggregate resources and helpful information. They plan to call both “The Village Won.”
Full house, wild demos: our MCP night in 10 minutes
Hey friends… last week’s MCP deep-dive hit different. We went from “wait, what’s MCP again?” to real demos wiring LLMs into tools you actually use.
Business Oregon Awards $1.9 Million to Support Rural Communities and Entrepreneurs
To support the development of entrepreneurial talent, successful enterprises, and resilient place-based economies in rural Oregon, Business Oregon has selected 18 applicants to receive $1,945,000 in grant funding from the Rural Opportunity Initiative (ROI) program. The ROI program is Business Oregon’s strategic effort to empower rural communities to support entrepreneurs and small business growth through financial support, network expansion, capacity support, and access to business development resources.
The 1 Billion Token Challenge: Finding the Perfect Pre-training Mix
TL;DR: We found that a static 50% finePDFs + 30% DCLM-baseline + 20% FineWeb-Edu mixture consistently outperforms complex curriculum strategies, avoiding catastrophic failures while maintaining excellent generalization.
The Bitter Lessons – by Dean W. Ball – Hyperdimensional
The U.S. and China are more like ships on the open seas, voyaging toward some unknown, only dimly imagined destination. Perhaps we think it is India we will find, though more likely it is a new continent altogether. We do not know that we are headed in the right direction, though neither are we stabbing entirely in the dark. And we both have the intuition that it is probably to beneficial to “arrive” (my metaphor is breaking down) before the other. That intuition is likely correct.
“Build What’s Fundable” – by Kyle Harrison – Investing 101
I have no doubt that YC was an absolute net positive for the world for the first decade at least, if not more. But somewhere along the way, the game changed. Startups were no longer as opaque; they became much more understood. YC couldn’t simply unmask; it had to mass produce.
Google, Oregon universities, nonprofits launch AI accelerator – Portland Business Journal
The coalition consists of the Metro Regional Innovation Hub, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon State University, the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, the Technology Association of Oregon and TiE Oregon. The Metro Hub is coordinating the program.
Craft your perfect charcuterie board at Portland’s Cheese and Meat Festival – Here is Oregon – hereisoregon.com
You could also check out Sibeiho, a Portland startup that has won awards for its pickles and sambal, and which is now selling Spicy Fig Jambal.
