This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paypal Today’s show: Anthropic gave AI agents hands, allowing them to control real-world equipment like robots and microscopes… but is it safe to give autonomous agents their own lasers? Gatik’s Gautam Narang says the real danger isn’t one machine like this going rogue, it’s the exploit surface hiding in the gaps between the machines. Plus, in a huge week for AI news… OpenClaw shipped its biggest release ever. AND the entire industry debated whether or not agents are forming “civilizations.” On TWiAI Ep 29, our expert panel — including Gautam (Gatik), Russ d’Sa (LiveKit), and Billy Kraft (Path) — explores the world of “multiplayer agents,” and Jason suggests the one killer feature that would make any new agentic app the market leader. PLUS Perplexity’s new “Hybrid Compute” just for Macs, some advice for Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, the value of “AI Detectors” like Pangram, and Jason’s complete guide to tipping and over-tipping. Guests: Gautam Narang on X: https://x.com/gautam_narang?lang=en Gatik: https://www.gatik.ai/ Russ d’Sa on X: https://x.com/dsa LiveKit: https://livekit.com/ Billy Kraft on X: https://x.com/billykraft Path: https://path.dev/ Relevant Links: OpenClaw 2.0 - https://openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-2-accidentally Grok Bot — https://grok.com Buzz — https://buzz.build Perplexity Hybrid Compute — https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-hybrid-compute-on-mac John Ternus — https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/ OpenAI's Mac mini / Mac Studio buying spree https://the-decoder.com/openai-and-rival-ai-labs-are-buying-tens-of-thousands-of-mac-minis-to-train-computer-use-agents/ Waymo hits a child — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/waymo-nhtsa-crash-child-school.html Timestamps: 2:58 OpenClaw 2.0 5:11 "Agents ARE AI" 7:27 Billy: OpenClaw is still too technical for business users 9:00 Slack Code, and collaborative prompting 10:40 Multi-agent orchestration and Stripe's "minions" 14:13 Slack's moat, switching costs, and the Salesforce rebound 15:11 Jason's "Oracle": a heads-up display for the whole company 18:42 The Hugging Face breach: who's responsible when agents go rogue? 19:42 Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute — local models on your Mac 21:39 Why unmetered local tokens change corporate behavior 26:57 Gatik's Autonomous Vehicle AI Stack 32:22 Jason's Tesla FSD stories 34:05 Are AV companies being pushed to move too fast? 41:38 Trucking is a "have to have," robotaxis are a "nice to have" 42:36 Jason's fix: a safety driver for the first million rides 46:50 Why physical AI's adoption curve runs in decades 52:21 Anthropic's Model Hardware Standard (MHS), explained 1:06:27 How Jason got onion rings on the menu at Buck's of Woodside 1:09:05 AI detectors under fire: Pangram, MIT, and the handwritten diary 1:15:20 Why AI is "very mid" at writing (it learned from the average) 1:17:11 The Orin Kerr test: Pangram catches Claude writing as Kerr 1:28:35 Micro Duck and designing robots with Claude 1:29:42 Phil Kaplan's $14 custom circuit boards Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
