Gen Z Is Done With LinkedIn

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Hi! Here are today’s top AI stories:

  • Gen Z Is Done With LinkedIn

  • He's Trading His $8M Home for AI Stock

  • AI Around The World

NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Gen Z Is Done With LinkedIn

Image: Series

Series is a bet that the next LinkedIn for Gen Z won’t be an app at all, but an AI “connector” that lives inside the messaging interface they already use every day: iMessage.

Two Yale seniors, Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, have raised a $5.1 million pre-seed round from investors including Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to build Series, an AI-powered professional and social network that runs entirely over text.

  • Instead of profiles and feeds, users text a Series phone number with who they are and who they want to meet.

  • The AI replies with a swipeable “shares” carousel of 10 relevant people, each card showing a photo and a short “ask.”

  • If there’s a match, you can press and hold to spin up a private chat inside the Series thread—no personal numbers exchanged, no app download, no new account.

The founders insist Series a next‑generation social network that treats iMessage as the primary interface, betting that distribution and habit are more important than owning the UI chrome.

The product has spread across more than 750 campuses and reports an eye‑popping 82% day‑30 retention. .

He's Trading His $8M Home for AI Stock

A Bay Area banker is so convinced AI is the future that he’s literally trying to swap his 13‑acre Mill Valley estate for Anthropic stock instead of cash.

Storm Duncan, an investment banker, bought the property in 2019 for about $4.75 million and now values it around $8 million, but he’s created a LinkedIn “listing” saying he wants to exchange the home directly for equity in Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude.

Anthropic is raising around $30 billion at roughly a $380 billion valuation. On secondary markets like Forge and others, implied valuations have even floated around the $1 trillion mark.

Duncan’s logic: he’s overexposed to real estate and “under-concentrated” in AI, while young Anthropic employees are likely in the opposite position—rich on paper in a single private stock, but relatively cash-poor for Bay Area housing.

It’s a very 2026 kind of listing: part diversification strategy, part flex on just how feverish the secondary market for top AI equity has become.

If you owned Anthropic stock, would you trade it for a Bay Area mansion?

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AI Around the World

California startup Sabi has come out of stealth with a brain‑reading beanie that converts thoughts into text using high‑density EEG sensors and an AI “brain foundation model.” The beanie reportedly packs 70,000–100,000 sensors into the fabric and aims to let users “type” around 30 words per minute just by thinking.

U.S. lawmakers are pushing a bipartisan bill to ban federal agencies from buying or using Chinese-made robots, citing national security and data‑privacy risks. The move fits a wider strategy to reduce dependence on Chinese technology, following earlier actions against Chinese drones, cameras, and telecom equipment

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Until next time!

Amplify Team ❤️

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