Tokens As The New Currency?

Tokens As The New Currency?

Author: Morning Brew August 20, 2026 Duration: 20:56
Stripe made the OpenRouter deal official at $7.5B. Unitree's Shanghai debut popped 460% past a $50B market cap, YouTube dangled millions to keep creators off Netflix, Slack launched Slack Code, and Binance turned AI agents loose on trading. Links Stripe agrees to acquire NYC-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to its investors (The New York Times) Collison frames tokens as the central currency for companies building with AI, capping two years of Stripe buying the plumbing under AI spending, from Metronome to Bridge (SiliconANGLE) Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surges 460% in its Shanghai trading debut, giving it a $50B+ market cap, after it raised ~$904M in its IPO (Bloomberg) Unitree says its new "Superman" humanoid can hit 12.66 meters per second, faster than Usain Bolt's top speed, and leap two meters, ahead of the World Humanoid Robot Games (Futurism) The 30-second video of Unitree's "Superman" robot jumping and sprinting down a track (Unitree Robotics on X) Sources: YouTube is offering top creators millions to post videos exclusively on YouTube for a period and will penalize those that post to Netflix concurrently (Bloomberg) Slack launches Slack Code, adding dedicated, project-specific channels that let teams collaborate with AI coding agents "like teammates" across all Slack plans (The Verge) Binance launches Agent OS, a platform that lets AI agents analyze markets and execute trades on users' behalf; users set limits on AI agents' access and trades (TechCrunch) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. Download Cash App Today: ⁠https://cash.app/⁠ #CashAppPartner. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast

Ever feel like the tech world moves too fast to keep up? Tech Brew Ride Home is that concise, insightful conversation you wish you had caught by the office coffee machine, delivered straight to your headphones. Produced by the team at Morning Brew, this daily podcast distills the essential news from Silicon Valley and beyond into a focused, fifteen-minute session designed for your commute or a short walk. Instead of drowning in headlines, you get a clear summary of what actually matters-the major deals, the intriguing controversies, and the subtle shifts that define the industry. Think of it as your audio debrief, cutting through the noise with context and a bit of wit. Each episode of this news-focused podcast ensures you’re not just informed but prepared, turning the flood of information into a manageable stream. It’s the efficient, engaging way to stay current without dedicating your entire afternoon to research, making that ride home a little smarter.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Tech Brew Ride Home
Podcast Episodes
New Gemini [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:26
Google launched Gemini 3.6 Flash and started pretraining Gemini 4. China weighed tightening AI export controls, Bessent said the US would probe Chinese model distillation, Apple prepped a Klarna-backed leasing program, a…
It's All China AI All The Time [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:10
Alibaba launched Qwen3.8 Max as Moonshot paused Kimi K3 signups amid demand. The Trump administration weighed a slow squeeze on Chinese AI, Hugging Face used China's GLM-5.2 after US guardrails blocked its breach forensi…
Kimi K3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:58
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter model it says rivals Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5. Google fell months behind on Gemini 3.5 Pro, MLB banned dugout iPads from accessing GenAI for in-game calls, and The Verge tested…
The Delivery Space Consolidates [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:03
Uber agreed to acquire Delivery Hero for ~$14.8B, expanding into 99 markets. Thinking Machines released its first open-weight model, Inkling, SpaceXAI open-sourced Grok Build after a data-upload backlash, and sources det…
PayPal On The Block? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:32
New York became the first state to pause new data center permits, worrying the AI industry. Stripe and Advent offered $53B+ for PayPal, OpenAI's first device leaked as a screen-free speaker, and PrismML shrank a model to…
Let's Regulate This AI Stuff? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:55
Demis Hassabis proposed a US-based frontier AI standards body modeled on FINRA. IBM's stock cratered 20% on a Q2 miss from chip-spending shifts, Spotify launched a voice-control feature, Kalshi debuted an AI compute forw…
Apple Sues OpenAI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:43
Apple sued OpenAI, alleging ex-employees stole trade secrets for its hardware push. Twelve states sued to block the Paramount-WBD merger, Anthropic extended free Fable 5 access as rivals raced on price, and Meta killed i…
The New GPT [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:39
OpenAI broadly released GPT-5.6 and launched ChatGPT Work, targeting Anthropic. Fidji Simo stepped down from OpenAI citing health, the EU found Meta's "addictive design" violates the DSA, Polymarket sought margin trading…
The Day Of All The Models [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:02
SpaceXAI debuted Grok 4.5 with Cursor, targeting Opus-level performance at lower cost. Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1 via API, OpenAI rolled out full-duplex GPT-Live voice models, PrismML ran the largest AI model on an iPh…