Good morning ☀️, leader of the next generation.

We will talk about agents. AI agents.

They will change the way how we do business, how we interract and even how we do our everyday lives.

Agents will build business.

Agents will organize your day.

Agents will fill up your fridge.

I will let that sit in here for a while, so we can imagine and build the future together one agent at a time...

Wispr secures $280M Series B funding to expand beyond AI dictation tools.

Wispr raises $280M at $2B valuation as it looks beyond dictation

Wispr, the startup behind a popular AI dictation tool, has raised $280 million in a Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures, valuing the company at $2 billion. The announcement brings Wispr's total funding to $361 million, with this latest round arriving less than ten months after its previous raise.

The new funding comes as competition in the AI dictation space intensifies. Apps such as Willow, Monologue, Aqua, and Superwhisper are all vying for users, and a growing number of developers are releasing free or low-cost alternatives aimed at prosumers. Existing backers — including Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures — all participated in the round, joined by new investors Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital.

Alongside the funding announcement, Wispr revealed a new speech-understanding model called Canto, designed to address a notable drop in dictation quality that users reported over recent weeks. The company says Canto will cut error rates from 30% to under 10%, a significant improvement that will be central to restoring user confidence in Wispr Flow, its flagship dictation product.

Since last November, Wispr has expanded its reach considerably. It launched its dictation app on Android and has grown its go-to-market teams in key regions including India and the United Kingdom. The company has also formed hardware partnerships, most notably with the Oasis ring, enabling users to dictate text on their devices without needing to speak aloud — a feature likely to appeal to users in shared or public spaces.

Wispr is now pushing into the meeting productivity space with the launch of a new note-taking tool, putting it in direct competition with established players like Granola, Fireflies, and Read AI. The tool can already produce summaries and surface action items from meetings, but the company sees room to deepen its integrations — potentially allowing it to update documents, create email drafts, or connect with other productivity platforms automatically.

Looking further ahead, Wispr recently launched Wispr Interface Labs, a research arm led by Ariya Rastrow, an early contributor to Amazon Alexa. The lab's focus is on exploring entirely new ways for humans to interact with computers, signaling that Wispr's ambitions stretch well beyond dictation and note-taking into the broader future of human-computer interaction.

Relay shuts down as founder rejoins Google to lead Chrome product team.

AI automation startup Relay shuts down, staff joins Google's Chrome team

Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation startup launched in 2021, is shutting down. Paying customers will lose access on September 14, with free users already cut off as of August 15. The closure was first announced in July.

Founder and CEO Jacob Bank announced he is rejoining Google as VP of Product for Chrome, where he will oversee product and developer relations. Bank previously worked at Google for six years after his scheduling app Timeful was acquired, leading products including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat.

Bank says Chrome is "a perfect place to collaborate with agents" and promises ambitious AI plans. The move aligns with Google's broader AI push, including Gemini's integration into Chrome and Search — a suite of tools now reaching over one billion users.

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Real Conversations with the People Building the AI Future

The Supercharged Podcast is quickly becoming a space for real, unfiltered conversations about AI — beyond the hype, tools, and surface-level takes.

Each episode dives deep with founders, operators, and builders who are actively working with AI — or building AI-first companies — to uncover how it's truly changing the way work gets done.

From strategy and systems to real-world execution, these conversations are practical, honest, and focused on what actually works — not just what sounds good.

⚡ Trends for the Future

Nvidia investing $1.5B in SoftBank data center developer behind OpenAI project

Nvidia has announced a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy, a data center and power development company linked to both SoftBank and OpenAI. The deal positions Nvidia as the sole supplier of compute infrastructure for OpenAI's Ports-Pike data center, located near Cincinnati, Ohio — a facility that could become one of the largest AI computing sites in the world.

In addition to the equity investment, Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in credit to help finance the construction of the facility. According to SEC filings, the data center is expected to scale from an initial 4.25 gigawatts of capacity to as much as 8 gigawatts — a scale that underscores the extraordinary computing demands of next-generation AI systems. SB Energy's current investors include SoftBank, which previously held $5.8 billion in Nvidia stock before selling its position in November to fund other AI ventures.

To power the enormous facility, SB Energy plans to build a 9.2 gigawatt natural gas power plant on the same site — land owned by the U.S. Department of Energy that was once used to enrich uranium for the country's nuclear arsenal and Navy submarines. The power plant alone is projected to cost $33 billion, a price that reflects a broader industry trend: the cost of building natural gas power plants has surged 66% over the past two years, according to BloombergNEF.

The energy implications extend well beyond the project itself. As the Ports-Pike plant and similar facilities come online, they are expected to compete aggressively with natural gas export markets. Analysts warn this convergence of demand could triple natural gas prices in certain parts of the country, raising broader questions about the long-term energy and economic costs of America's AI infrastructure buildout.

⚡ Let’s Make AI Actually Useful:
What Would Move the Needle in *Your* Industry?

AI has potential — but generic advice rarely helps.

What would be genuinely valuable for AI to do in your industry right now?

• Automate a painful workflow?
• Improve decision-making?
• Replace a manual process that wastes time?
• Help your team upskill faster?

Tell us what you’d want AI to handle — or where you feel stuck.

We’re using these insights to curate **industry-specific trainings, live webinars, and practical guidance** you can actually apply.