TWiST 500 interviews with Cortical Labs, Turing, AND Mercor | E2159

Today’s show: Alex is back with three more awesome interviews with founders on the bleeding edge of innovative tech. Dr. Hon Weng Chong walks us through the basics of biological computing and Cortical Labs’ first-ever commercial computer running on living human cells. Turing founder Jonathan Siddarth unpacks the secrets of LLM benchmarking, and explains why even our most advanced tests need to get much much harder right away. Finally, Mercor founder Brendan Foody on how AI is about to reinvent the hiring process, and marrying the effectiveness of recruiters with the ease of online job boards. It’s three — count ’em, three — can’t miss TWiST interviews guaranteed to make you smarter Timestamps: (0:00) OpenAI’s GPT-5: When is it coming out? Is it going to be TOO smart? (08:06) Cortical Labs’ Hon Weng Chong on the electric connection between neuroscience and machine learning (10:20) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist today! (11:27) Show Continues… (15:17) The extreme difficulty of going from the lab to a shippable product (20:00) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to www.get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today. (21:05) Show Continues… (28:15) Why data is a factor of time (29:52) AWS Activate - AWS Activate helps startups bring their ideas to life. Apply to AWS Activate today to learn more. Visit aws.amazon.com/startups/credits (31:16) Show Continues… (42:44) Turing CEO Jonathan Siddarth explains why it’s so important to keep benchmarking our LLMs (47:24) What it means when a model “saturates” a test, and why benchmarks need to get HARDER (50:22) What happens with the LLMs can answer all of our smartest questions? (53:44) AI Agents train in gyms? Wait, really? (01:01:33) Coding teaches models how to think, and more training mysteries don’t understand (01:03:11) Brendan Foody from Mercor explains the “matching problem” that makes hiring such a pain (01:07:02) How Mercor combines a job board’s distribution with the value of a recruitment agency (01:10:49) Brendan recalls building his first AI interviewer in his college dorm (01:20:16) Mercor has the opposite of a retention problem and crazy growth 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 Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: (10:20) Northwest Registered Agent. Form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Get more privacy, more options, and more done—visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist today! (20:00) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to www.get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today. (29:52) AWS Activate - AWS Activate helps startups bring their ideas to life. Apply to AWS Activate today to learn more. Visit aws.amazon.com/startups/credits 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 Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916