Get the Check

It’s another 6AM morning recording and Anika nods off during the recording - just kidding.
The hosts run first discuss Matt Schumer’s viral essay “Something Big Is Happening” (82M+ views on X), which argues AI labs intentionally made coding the focus, that most people don’t realize how advanced models are, and that we’re 1–2 years from AI autonomously building the next generation. They contrast it with Will Mandis’ response essay “Tool Shaped Objects,” arguing LLMs look like powerful tools but headlines focus on spend (GPU clusters, CapEx) more than real output, likening today’s prompting to Farmville-style busywork.
Next, they cover Anthropic’s new funding and model progress: Anthropic raises $30B (from NVIDIA, Microsoft, GIC, among others), bringing total capital raised to $57B and valuing the company at $380B after starting in 2021. They break down Opus 4.6 launching three months after 4.5, with a 4x context window increase and a big “needle-in-a-haystack” retrieval benchmark jump (18% to 76%), which they frame as improving the ability to find issues in large codebases even if core problem-solving hasn’t changed as much.
Finally, they move to AI in finance and AI insurance. Rogo raises a $75M Series C led by Sequoia, and Meridian raises a $17M seed led by a16z; both target finance workflows like deal flow automation, diligence, market research, modeling, and deck/spreadsheet automation. The hosts argue adoption is still early and research-heavy, and debate whether Meridian’s “Cursor for finance” IDE approach makes sense versus keeping Excel as the output layer, citing Microsoft adding Claude models to Copilot in Excel and a view that entrenched formats (Excel, GitHub PRs) won’t change quickly.
They close with AIUC (Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company), which raised a $15M seed from Nat Friedman (ex-GitHub CEO) and is cofounded by Ro Kitz (ex-Anthropic product, Center for AI Safety board member) and Rajiv Dani (ex-McKinsey partner). AIUC aims to underwrite and standardize risk for AI agents via insurance standards and audits (including red teaming), addressing liabilities like slurs, hacked agents, and data leaks/violations.
00:00 Intro01:46 ‘Something Big Is Happening’: Essay by Matt Schumer14:45 Anthropic’s $380B Valuation + Opus 4.6 Deep Dive28:02 Will AI replace Excel? Meridian’s ‘finance IDE’ debate38:33 AIUC: underwriting AI risk with standards, audits & insurance

You might remember the pod’s tech issues last week. Well this week they are so up. The pod has new, fancy mics and lighting. Priya kicks things off with her last-minute Super Bowl trip after buying tickets Saturday morning.
First up, the hosts break down the Anthropic vs. OpenAI Super Bowl ad beef. Anthropic dropped ads ahead of the game making fun of OpenAI for putting ads into ChatGPT. One featuring a fake therapist pitching a cougar dating site, another recommending shoe insoles to get jacked. The pod debriefs how Anthropic nailed ChatGPT's tone. They also discuss Sam Altman’s clap back that more Texans use ChatGPT than people use Claude in the entire country and if he was valid or not. Anika gives her hot take on why they’re both right and both wrong. OpenAI's actual Super Bowl ad went the wholesome route and the general public loved it, while Anthropic's ad landed in the bottom 3% of Super Bowl ads over the last five years according to Adweek. The trio also gets into Wegovy's Super Bowl push for their new GLP-1 pill, which took 10 years to develop, and Priya’s so down to take it (kidding, kind of).
Then the pod dives into their “Get the Check” segment on Northwood Space, the space infrastructure company founded by former Disney Channel star Bridget Mendler. Northwood just raised a $100 million Series B and landed a $50 million contract with the US Space Force for commanding national security space assets. The hosts walk through why ground networks matter: satellites need to transfer data back to Earth, and right now that means renting time on giant manually-turned dish antennas. Northwood's phased array technology is changing that and the pod is bullish. Maya highlights how Northwood's tech was actually used during the LA fires to get satellite data when traditional systems couldn't transfer it fast enough, and Anika draws a parallel to AT&T and Verizon selling off their infrastructure to companies like American Tower.
Finally, Anika and Priya sit down with Logan, Anika’s next-door neighbor growing up and now a full-time prediction market trader on Kalshi. You can create a Kalshi account to trade here: https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck. Logan quit his $75K financial risk analyst job after making more from trading on the side, and now has around $450K on Kalshi and $90K on Polymarket, having already made more year-to-date than his old annual salary by February. He walks through his research process, which includes buying a Dutch streaming service to watch Netherland’s election debates live and waking up at 3AM when trading international markets. Logan talks through some of his best plays, including catching a Nobel Prize winner before Kalshi and the public and buying Mark Zuckerberg at 1 cent for Time Person of the Year. Logan describes himself as "vibes-based" versus model-heavy and gives advice for people interested in trading prediction markets.
00:00 Priya goes to the Super Bowl
01:40 Super Bowl tech ads: Anthropic vs. OpenAI, Lays, Him & Hers
11:18 Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.6, OpenAI released Codex 5.3
16:51 Northwood Space raised $100B Series B
19:37 Northwood Space’s $50M Space Force contract
25:50 Interviewing a full-time trader on Kalshi @LoganPredicts
32:05 Spending 100 hours a week researching
37:14 Figuring out who is going to win Time’s Person of the Year
42:51 Kalshi as a source of truth in a post-truth world
45:03 What prediction market traders say in their group chats

Maya, Anika, and Priya are back. If you notice Maya’s on her phone this week, it’s because she broke her laptop while on FaceTime with Anika and Priya. If you notice Priya’s wavy video, we don’t really know what happened there, but we’ll be so back next week with fixed laptops and cameras. This week they talk about OpenClaw leading to Reddit for AI agents, Trump’s Fed Chair nominee, and Elon’s SpaceX and xAI merger.
First they talk about OpenClaw, which is the viral open source AI personal assistant that's been taking over the internet. Originally called Clawdbot (Anthropic said absolutely not). Created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, it's now the fastest growing GitHub project ever with 140K stars. The hosts dive into some of the tasks people have gotten their Clawdbot to do, as well as the security risks that come with giving an agent access to literally everything. The hosts talk about the concerns around prompt injections. The hosts also debrief the biggest gossip in tech, which is Moltbook. It’s a Reddit-style forum where 150,000 AI agents talk to each other. The bots are discussing self-preservation, creating religions (the Church of Molt), and talking about humans like they're their pets. Tune in to hear why the hosts actually don’t think it’s a huge deal the way the internet does.
Next, Trump nominated Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair, and the Senate confirmation odds are sitting at 83%. You can trade on that market here: https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck. Warsh is a former Fed governor and Morgan Stanley M&A banker, so basically the establishment friendly pick. His big thing is shrinking the Fed's balance sheet (they're holding $4.2 trillion in government debt) and being generally more hawkish than Powell. He was criticized for wanting to raise rates too fast during the financial crisis. This may be the Fed that has to address the impact of AI on unemployment, but at least until now Warsh has been bullish on the impact of AI on the economy.
The last segment is about Elon merging SpaceX and xAI. The pod actually recorded this a couple hours before it was confirmed, which is why they discuss it hypothetically. They dive into how Elon is building an AI empire: Optimus robots, Robotaxis, the Colossus supercomputer, Grok including on X, and eventually data centers on Mars via SpaceX. It looks like SpaceX is headed for an over trillion dollar IPO this year. You can trade on the IPO probability here: https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck. Anika expresses some concern about one person controlling humanoid robots, brain-computer interfaces (Neuralink), social media, space travel, and AI compute infrastructure.
Finally the hosts say they are going to Known’s Valentine’s Day party. Maya notes that she probably has plans with Adi and can’t go, but also she can say whatever she wants because her boyfriend never listens till the end of the episode anyways…Priya and Anika have zero other plans, so they’ll be there. Let them know if you’re going and check out the interview with Celeste about Known here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1G3vkS8aqXdVoQrnxeaCr8.
00:00 Maya breaks her work computer
02:01 OpenClaw and Moltbook the first social media for AI agents
20:58 Trump announces Kevin Warsh as his Fed Chair pick
33:36 Elon announces SpaceX and xAI merger valued at $1.25T

This week the pod talks to Celeste the CEO and co-founder of Known. Celeste dropped out of Stanford to build an AI-powered dating app that just raised $10M from Forerunner and NFX. Celeste explains why dating apps are fundamentally broken: they profit when you stay single and are a part of their long tail of retained users. Known flips the business model by monetizing dates instead of monthly subscriptions. Their key metric is introductions leading to people meeting.

Celeste breaks down why the data shows opposites don't actually attract, why 98% of users share their deepest romantic preferences with an AI, and how voice-based onboarding gives Known a matching edge no competitor has because human voice conveys much more than text. Celeste debriefs Known’s beta in SF where 80% of introductions turned into actual dates, which is much higher than legacy players in the space.

Celeste also shares how she accidentally dropped out of Stanford (she and her co-founder missed class enrollment by weeks while white boarding the app until 4am), how she convinced one of Uber's first engineers to join a 22-year-old's startup, and the real reason she's launching in SF instead of New York. The pod ends with the wildest user stories and a speed round of kiss, marry, kill.

You can download Known today: https://www.knowndating.com/

Next week we are covering Ramp’s Super Bowl tailgate at Fort Mason. DM us @getthecheckpod on Instagram, if you want to come and put your Super Bowl trades in today on Kalshi: https://kalshi.com/r/getthecheck

00:00 Introducing Celeste the co-founder and CEO of Known
00:42 Throwing SF’s biggest party in 2 weeks
03:02 The decision to launch in SF
11:01 Why people misunderstand the loneliness epidemic
14:08 What makes Known’s business model different
21:55 Do opposites attract
27:39 Celeste’s craziest set up
30:16 How to ban your ex from Known
31:17 Why Celeste dropped out of Stanford
39:41 Kiss, marry, kill speed round

This week the pod kicks off with Anika's unexpected internet fame after a photo of her and her ex's ex went viral with 11M views. If that sounds really random it’s because it was. Tune in to hear the full story and follow us on X @getthecheckpod. If you just want to see the tweet you can go to @anikamirzaa…
Then they dive into Capital One's $5.15B acquisition of Brex, which is down over 50% from its peak valuation. Maya, Anika, and Priya break down the Brex vs. Ramp rivalry and how Ramp caught up despite a two-year head start. They get into the weeds on revenue multiples, who actually made money on the Brex deal (spoiler: YC got 800x), and why this acquisition might be the right move for Brex given Capital One's unlimited balance sheet. The hosts also debate whether Capital One can compete with Amex for corporate cards by combining luxury lounge perks with Brex's software.
Next, they cover the Davos drama. Trump wants to buy Greenland, Denmark said no, and NATO allies are not happy. The hosts explain why Greenland matters strategically: missile defense from adversaries, rare earth minerals, and trade routes. All of this becomes more important as the Arctic melts. Maya shares her thoughts on Trump, in case you didn't know them already.
Finally, the pod covers Humans&, a new AI lab that raised a $480M seed round at $4B. The founders are ex-every major AI lab and their mission is to build "human-centric" AI. The pod discusses the workplace productivity tools they’re going after like Claude Cowork, Notion, Slack, etc. Maya and Anika get into a full debate about whether this is actually different from what every other lab is doing. The pod ends with them agreeing to disagree.
00:00 Anika goes viral
04:41 Capital One acquires Brex for $5.15B
08:20 The Brex vs. Ramp rivalry
19:00 Davos 2026 and the Greenland crisis
25:00 Why Greenland is so important
34:00 Would Humans& the new AI lab “Get the Check”?
44:30 Anika and Maya debate if Humans& is meeting its mission