James Spiro

🔗🇺🇸🤝 🇮🇱 Paywalled [free when you subscribe]: Why the most interesting Israeli founders aren’t in Tel Aviv anymore, and what that means for all of us still here. Read "Startup Nation's Texas Thesis" now: thespirocircle.com/p/startup-nati…

The Spiro Circle exists, in part, because I believe the story of Israeli innovation is misunderstood outside this country (and sometimes inside it, too). Part of telling that story honestly means acknowledging that it no longer lives in one place. Startup Nation is becoming much larger than Sarona Market. More: thespirocircle.com/p/startup-nati…

🔗🇺🇸🤝 🇮🇱 Paywalled [free when you subscribe]: Why the most interesting Israeli founders aren’t in Tel Aviv anymore, and what that means for all of us still here. Read "Startup Nation's Texas Thesis" now: thespirocircle.com/p/startup-nati…

Recent weeks have completely flipped what I thought I knew about some LLMs. Models are changing, and their performance has completely shifted - at least in my mind. If you had to choose, which one would you pay for: ChatGPT or Claude?

The automated outreach from @qwoted is off the charts. I'm getting several emails a day from account and media managers asking if I need help with anything. I've asked several times to be removed from its mailing lists. One time I actually had a call with a team member there, and she was on a beach in Thailand. The connection was too weak, so we had to reschedule.

New for @ForbesIsrael: There's a new standard (some would say, expectation) being set by tech hyperscalers who come from a software-first culture and expect physical construction to behave accordingly. “A person who works for Google and is used to building software that doesn’t break expects to get a building that doesn’t break at the same quality,” said Erez Dror, founder at Genda, which @Buildots recently acquired. “They’re setting a new standard, which I believe will eventually trickle down to everything.” Unlike a tech organization, where a single executive decision can transform operations overnight, construction is built around individual projects with its own lead, subcontractors, or even its own tolerance for disruption. Change management, Dror argues, is “just a different beast.” Learn about AI's construction problem here: forbes.co.il/e/the-ai-gold-…

Is Google search really dead in the age of LLMs? Tal Shoham, CEO of Velocity, the AI monetization startup that just closed a $27M seed round, explains why he thinks search isn't dying, but evolving. Full episode: thespirocircle.com/p/welcome-to-t…

“The Talmud's layered, self-referential reinterpretation preserves core values across civilizational resets, exactly what you want in an AI that could edit its values away.”

More:

As America marked its 250th anniversary, the coverage was split down predictable lines: @MannyMarotta, curator of @250YearsAgoLive, unpacked why there's no more media monoculture, how Trump's branding complicated a nonpartisan commemoration, and the importance of building an academically sourced, apolitical account of America's founding Full episode: thespirocircle.com/p/independence…

I had a conversation with journalist James Spiro on his show, The Spiro Circle, about America 250 and the importance of celebration and observation without political bias. Check it out:

For those who forgot: - @CNN called it "a big blah" - @NYTimes and @WashingtonPost framed it through national division. - Whereas @Disney and @TheFP leaned into celebration.

Whereas Google Search runs on keywords and social media runs on personalization, Tal Shoham is betting that the signal of the AI era will be intent: an explicit, real-time indication of what a user actually wants, in their own words. He is co-founder and CEO of Velocity, which just raised $27M in seed funding to build the ad and monetization infrastructure for AI-native apps in a round led by NFX and Red Dot Capital Partners, with participation from Stardom Ventures, Corner Ventures, and Transcend. But! Chat conversations are not basic search queries: they’re often confessional, emotional, and far more revealing than anything a single keyword would capture. We discuss this all in "Welcome to the age of AI advertising", which you can watch here: thespirocircle.com/p/welcome-to-t…

Above is a three-part series that tackles the conference and its themes in the following structure: - How antisemitism is defined through language and ideology - Where Jews belong in physical or digital spaces - How antisemitism spreads in technology and information systems

🇮🇱 I spent three days trying to make sense of modern antisemitism Here's what I learned from 330 speakers at "Contemporary Antisemitism 2026" in Haifa, and why I organized my reporting for @JNS_org around these three themes. thespirocircle.com/p/contemporary…

Part one, on language and ideology, can be found here: jns.org/feature/at-hai… Part two, on Jewish belonging and identity, can be found here: jns.org/feature/modern…

From AI and social media to Wikipedia and legacy newsrooms, there’s a new frontier in the fight against antisemitism: the digital systems that increasingly shape what people see, believe, and what machines learn. Read my final part of the three-part series on how Jew-hate and anti-Israel sentiment is changing in modern times. All available on @JNS_org now: jns.org/feature/antise… @BarIlanU | @uhaifa | @CyberWell_org

From AI and social media to Wikipedia and legacy newsrooms, the final day of “Contemporary Antisemitism 2026” turned to a new frontier in the fight against Jew-hate: the digital systems that shape what people see and what machines learn. For @JNS_org >> jns.org/feature/antise…

So predictable. blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-two-antise…

@andyburnham So predictable. blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-two-antise…

Labour’s initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt. We got it wrong and I am sorry for that.

Zuck’s first post on X in over three years (and before that, 11 years!) He knows this is the place to talk all things AI.