Brooke Lacey@brookejlacey
A $30M Series A. The About page autoplays the actual instrumental of Daft Punk's "Giorgio by Moroder" with Moroder's vocals AI-stripped from the track. Not a reimagining. Not "inspired by." The real song, vocals removed looping on the page in the background while you read.
The words on that page mirror Moroder's opening monologue beat by beat. like letter-precise transposition. he cast himself in the Moroder role- He scored his own founder bio to a copyrighted Sony track he ran through stem separation which is, incidentally, the same category of tool his platform sits in.
I spent a weekend trying to decide whether to read this as elaborate performance art or as the most expensive sony copyright violation in startup history. Either way, it's the about page of a $30M company.
The announcement video pinned to the round contains literally zero product. No dashboard. No demo. No metric. No customer. Just diatom thumbnails and pixel art "lonely AI" and stock footage of children silhouetted on beaches at sunset.
The ARR claim has 14x'd in 90 days. 🤡 $709K on Mixergy → $3M on the True Ventures blog → "approaching $10M" in the announcement. 2.7-star Trustpilot. The math doesn't math.
And then the founder, on his own announcement post on X, in reply to someone asking what the $30M is actually for: "mostly AI compute and marketing tbh. And also hire the best marketing agencies to help to the next marketing stunts."
The next. Marketing. Stunts. He said it in writing. With "next" doing the work of admitting that the previous ones were stunts too. The mask isn't slipping down his face he took it off and is holding it.
I don't actually care if my brother in Christ here gets called out. I care that this is now the precedent.
If a $30M round closes on this in 2026, the next ten companies of this shape are much easier to fund. Which means every founder who is actually shipping something real, who is grinding through compliance, who is in their inbox at 3am answering customer emails (unlike my guy here), just got handed a version of the AI startup category that they have to compete with for capital and attention and air.
The receipts of "aisloP" BS have been sitting on the marketing surface the entire time. Nobody hid anything.
So what do we do when the dishonest version is louder than the honest one?
