‘Neolabs’ Rivaling OpenAI, New Finishing School for Founders, Circle’s Q3 Earnings | Nov 12, 2025

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Paswitcha. It is Wednesday, November 12th. We have got a great show lined up for you today. First up, Circle shares are down a bit this morning after reporting quarterly earnings. We'll discuss the results with the company CFO. Then we'll talk to our AI reporter about a surge of investment into so-called Neo Labs, startups taking a different approach to building AI models than OpenAI or Anthropic. I'm also talking to a friend of the show, Sam Lesson, who started an etiquette finishing school for founders. We'll get you some helpful tips there.

0:49And we will finish off with a deep dive into the ways in which enterprise software companies are brushing up against each other as their AI agents start to overlap. It is an exciting show, so let's get right on into things. Circle reported earnings this morning. Total revenue and reserve income was up 66 % compared to last year, and the company indicated it might launch a new token native to its ARK stablecoin blockchain network. Joining me now is Jeremy Fox Gein, CFO of Circle. Jeremy, it's great to have you on the show. Welcome to TITV. Thank you, Akash. It's great to be here. Looking forward to talking to you.

1:24So let's talk briefly about the quarter that you had. And I do want to talk about some of the bigger announcements that you made in your earnings this morning. You doubled USD circulation compared to this time last year. It's up 20 % compared to last quarter when you reported. What is driving the adoption here? What is working from Circle's end? What is working? We're at the very beginning of what can best only be described as a global megatrend, which is the building and growth of the new internet financial system. And that's grounded in blockchains. And we have ARK, as you mentioned, our layer one blockchain that we've recently launched into Testnet.

2:02That's the digital asset layer. We have USDC, our leading regulated stablecoin, which, as you said, grew 108 % year on year to$73.7 billion at the end of the quarter. And importantly, its utility grew 580 % during that same time period as on-chain transactions grew to$9.6 trillion. And also then there's the application layer that's built on top of that. And within that, we have Circle Payments Network. So within all of these things, Circle is a company that's growing and building and innovating at every layer of this new internet financial system. And we're market neutral infrastructure that increasingly the world's leading companies are choosing to partner with and build upon.

2:47And that's just putting us in a very, very good position. But talk to me about where that growth specifically comes from. Is this getting more adoption of USDC abroad? What specific initiatives has Circle been undertaking that is really driving that growth? Well, I'll give the macro and then I'll bring it down a little bit. The fundamental point to remember is this is internet architecture. If think about it as general purpose, internet based architecture for money. And that means all of the different use cases for money are ripe for this technology disruption that can make things move quicker, that can make things move cheaper, and that will ultimately bring massive benefits to businesses and consumers all the way over the world.

3:29But more specifically, the bootstrap use case for digital money was in the digital asset markets, and those remain very important to our business. And within those markets, we're seeing strong growth, and indeed, we're taking share, both in spot trading, both in perps trading, and in the usage within those markets overall. moving away from kind of digital asset markets into more traditional money uses. There's strong growth in dollarization, which is just people all around the world want to hold US dollars and the internet is making it easier for them to do that. Importantly, there's growth in cross-border payments, right?

4:07This is where the frictions of the traditional financial system are typically the highest with cross-border flows being slower and being more expensive. And if you're a business operating with those business needs, you'd be looking to invest in these new technologies and you'd be wanting your financial institution partners to bring these benefits to you. We're seeing tremendous growth there as well. But looking forward, there are many, many other growth vectors ahead of us. And so let's talk about some of those growth vectors. You know, one thing I wanted to get your perspective on is we've seen companies like Paxos and Anchorage launch stablecoin issuance as a service products and offerings.

4:47Can we expect Circle to launch that kind of an offering? Well, it's interesting. We're seeing lots and lots of different types of competition kind of emerging in the market, particularly post-Genius, given the Genius Act in the United States, which within the U.S. market gives greater regulatory clarity. I'd note, however, that this has always been an incredibly competitive market. There's like$100 stablecoins, including ones launched by many consortia of leading companies and many very significant companies have launched stablecoins in the past. And we see that those have achieved relatively little traction.

5:24So we see lots of different types of kind of competition coming up. But we remain focused on growing the core utility of our stablecoin network, because the value to the world of a stablecoin is not in its existence, right? The marginal value of a new stablecoin launched by anyone in today's world is close to zero, as evidenced by the competitive structure. But the value comes from its interoperability with the traditional financial system, with distribution, with liquidity at scale globally. And, you know, we have the partnership reaches. We have the interoperability. You can mint and redeem USDC at scale in a well risk managed manner in major financial market centers worldwide.

6:08So no plans to go with a stable coin issuance as a service product in the near future. We would say never say no, but that's not on our immediate roadmap. Okay. You talked about competition. I wonder how you think about Visa and MasterCard. They have dove deeper. I don't know what the past tense of dive is. They've dove in deeper into the stablecoin industry. I wonder how important you think it is for them to weigh deeper into stablecoins and really adopt the technology in order for this infrastructure to really work? Well, what you're seeing is leading financial institutions, whether they're banks, payments companies like Visa and MasterCard, capital markets institutions, all are looking to bring the benefits of these new technologies to their customers because they're all seeing that the benefits are real.

7:02And so that leads to enormous amounts of activity within those companies and the names you mentioned, right, they partner with us and they have built products and launched products using and leveraging USDC. So we see this growth across the whole financial institution landscape as only beneficial for the world, beneficial for the customers of those institutions, and ultimately beneficial for our business. And so long term, you don't see Visa and MasterCard as competition at all? Well, I mean, in many ways, right, this is a highly competitive landscape, right? Visa and MasterCard are, you know, using their products and services to help their customers move money around the world in the most efficient way possible.

7:46The way you think about Circle's business, right? We're an infrastructure company. You know, we have a deep commitment to market neutrality, and we're an infrastructure company that all of these financial institutions that you mentioned, that they build upon and they partner with to bring the benefits of these new technologies to their customers. So the infrastructure piece is interesting because you also just recently launched the ARK blockchain, which is Circle's bid to further build out that infrastructure. And you announced today in the earnings that there could be a possibility that you actually issue a native token to the ARK blockchain.

8:23I want to understand how that would work from a fees perspective. I mean, in a world where Circle did issue a token native to the ARK blockchain, and again, we should remind people, the ARK blockchain is sort of, it's Circle's attempt to really own the rails and create something that is native to stablecoin infrastructure. But in a world where you issued a token native to that chain, where would the fees go, the revenue from this blockchain, would that accrue to the token holders? Would it go to Circle shareholders? How do you think about that? There's lots of different design choices and economic design choices and governance design choices that are inherent in designing a token.

9:05We've had a lot of companies, a lot of the companies that are building on and testing the ARK testnet along with us, engage us in dialogue about what they would like to see. And so it's too early to say how any of those specific design choices will play out. But we wanted to share that we were considering the possibility of launching a token. and we're in the middle of thinking through what all of those different possibilities are. So while no decisions have been made yet, we're taking feedback from our kind of our partners and market participants and the broader set of ecosystems. And, you know, we'll keep the market appraised as things move on.

9:43Last question for you before we let you go. We've seen M &A in the stablecoin sector heat up recently. What is Circle looking to buy? There's a lot of activity, that's for sure. We've been very clear about our M &A strategy. We use M &A to accelerate along our core strategy. So we've done, I think, three, we've closed three M &A deals this year. And I would expect we will continue to use M &A as an important part of the strategy going forward. We've acquired, we've brought in IP so that we can accelerate and expand kind of the core of what we're doing. What pockets are you looking at most closely right now?

10:23I mean, it would be remiss of us not to look at all pockets, but it is way too early to say any plans for things that have not happened yet. Great. Well, Jeremy, I want to thank you for coming on the show. It was a fascinating quarter, and I look forward to having you on again when you guys report in three months. Look forward to it, Akash. Thank you so much. Okay. We've talked on this show about NeoClouds, which are now going head-to-head with big cloud providers. But yesterday, we published a story on the rise of Neo Labs, or a group of companies that are looking to build AI models with techniques and approaches they believe big AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic may be overlooking.

11:04It turns out Neo Labs have gotten a ton of funding, and investors have poured$2.5 billion into these startups. To tell us more about who these companies are and why they're so attractive, I want to bring on Stephanie Palazzolo, who covers all things AI. hi stephanie welcome back to the show it's great to see you hi thanks for having me so let's talk about neo labs what is a neo lab let's define it and then we'll get into the trends totally um and yes apologies in advance because i feel like the fun thing about covering ai is they love to create new terms to confuse everyone um but essentially neo labs are pretty simple basically they that term is kind of referring to this newer group of large ai labs that are not you know open ai Anthropic, Google, Meta, some of these more established labs.

11:53So these labs have kind of popped up over the last couple of years, but we kind of noticed more recently that there's been a flurry of them that have gotten lots of investments from investors in the last, say, three to six months or so. And these labs say that they can outmaneuver some of the bigger labs like OpenAI and Anthropic by really focusing on either research areas or certain techniques that they feel like the larger labs are not paying enough attention to. And the interesting part here is some of these Neo labs are actually founded by researchers. I mean, you talked in the story about the researcher-founder dynamic that is popping up.

12:32Tell us a little bit about that. Totally, yeah. I mean, this has been a very long-running dynamic within the AI industry over the past couple years, where you see researchers leaving more established labs like Google, Meta, and now even OpenAI, Anthropic, and XAI to basically start their own thing. And I think there's a couple of different reasons for that, that we've heard from researchers, founders, and investors. I think first, a lot of these folks are coming up on kind of their two, three, four-year mark at these labs. And maybe a lot of their stock has kind of vested at this point. And they're seeing that there's limited financial upside from remaining at these companies.

13:12I think additionally, you know, as these companies get larger, they're starting to look more like big tech companies. And so, you know, a focus on commercial success and making profits, and maybe less openness to try and like more experimental approaches or research that might not pan out. And so some of these researchers are getting frustrated, and they're thinking, you know, if I can't do like, my cool experimental research here, at, you know, OpenAI, XAI, Meta, why not go out and start my own lab to kind of focus on it? Is there any evidence that their approach is better or could have more potential than an OpenAI or an Anthropic?

13:49I mean, it's a little bit tough to tell so far just because, again, so many of these labs are so early that, you know, a lot of them haven't even released a product or maybe have, you know, publicly said just a couple sentences about what their approach is. So I think it's very hard to tell right now. But I mean, looking back, we can even say that like Anthropic was one of the original Neo labs because its founders left OpenAI and they've obviously had a ton of success. And so I think these founders are hoping that, you know, their research ideas will kind of pan out. But right now it's a little tough to see that happening just because OpenAI and Anthropic seem so far ahead and obviously are generating, you know, billions of dollars in revenue.

14:33Give us a few examples of some of these Neo labs that are popping up and who are raising money. You talked about them in your story. Yeah. So one that we've heard a lot about is called Humans And. And so this was founded by a very well-known XAI researcher. Sorry, very well-known XAI researcher who does a lot of work around reinforcement learning, which is a very exciting kind of popular research technique that's been used a lot in the AI industry. And so he really wants to build an AI lab that's focused on more, you know, kind of what he calls human-centric AI that understands people's motivations and goals better and is able to kind of work on longer duration tasks that can take, you know, days, weeks, months, years even.

15:20There are some other ones that we've written about, like ISARA, which is another AI lab that's founded by an ex-open AI safety researcher. And so they want to build software that can basically spin up like thousands of agents to work on a task versus maybe just having one or two work on them. And then the last one that we've talked about and wrote about recently is a new lab that's founded by u.com's CEO, Richard Socher. And so he wants to make a lab that's focused on AI that can automate AI research. And so it is a very like, I guess, wide range of techniques. And I think these are all things that the big labs are working on to some extent, but I think these founders feel like having a lab that's, you know, putting 100 % of its energy into some of these techniques is a better use of their time.

16:09And, you know, these companies are raising, in some cases, over a billion dollars or at least hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to kind of work on these different ideas that they have. I guess the thing that I'm just really puzzled by, and maybe this is the founder dynamic, is that you've got to take a shot and go it on your own and have confidence you can do something special. The thing that puzzles me is how do these Neolabs think that they are going to compete with an Anthropic who are in the billions of dollars of investments right now? This is an expensive pursuit. Do you think they're going to stand a chance even?

16:46Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think it's one that I definitely thought a lot about while I was writing this piece. I think part of the dynamic that's going on is, you know, we heard from some investors that have spoken to these founders that these founders are kind of thinking, you know, right now, VC money is flowing pretty easily. A lot of them actually think that a year from now, the market might not be so open if there's some chance that the AI bubble might pop. And so I think their idea is like, you know, I might as well raise a couple million or even in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars right now, like while I know the market is open, even if I don't really have a fully thought out plan versus risking waiting a year and then not having that money available to me.

17:26But yeah, I mean, it's a very tough market. And I think for me as well, it's also interesting to see some investors backing these companies because some of these investors that even batch some of the larger labs, like OpenAI and Anthropic. So maybe for them, it's, you know, wanting to kind of diversify their bets and make sure they're not too concentrated in any one lab. Right. Well, Stephanie, we've talked about the Neo Clouds. We've talked about the Neo Labs. I can only imagine what Neo class of startups is. I guess Neo Chips maybe is the one that we haven't talked about. And we, of course, know that there are tons of chip startups trying to compete with NVIDIA.

18:04Next time you come on, you'll have to tell us more about those. Thank you for coming on. That is Stephanie Palazzolo, our AI reporter here at the information. If you've been on Tech Twitter or Tech X lately, you may have heard about Slow Ventures Etiquette Finishing School. It is a program for founders that happened last week, hoping to teach them about etiquette and how to conduct themselves. It's already gotten a lot of attention from the Y Combinator world. And so I want to bring on Sam Lesson, general partner at Slow Ventures. Sam is also the husband of founder and editor-in-chief Jessica Lesson.

18:37I want to bring on Sam to talk more about it. Sam, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you. Always great to be on the show. So let's talk about etiquette finishing school. Did you grow up with this as a kid, a teenager, a founder? Where did you get the idea for this? Well, look, I mean, the answer is hilariously yes. I did go to a terrible etiquette finishing school as a kid briefly. But no, there's a broader point here, which is, you know, if you think about the history of Silicon Valley and the places we've been, it was always cute to be the tech kid showing up with no manners and no etiquette and no respect for a community or culture because you had the magic technology and people had a lot of like excitement for that and excuse of that and so there was a whole vibe of silicon valley which is it's only about the product nothing else matters it doesn't matter how you show up it doesn't matter anything just deliver the technology you know i think that's really changed recently especially with ai you know tech is now taking people's jobs um people are worried about it it's the front page of every newspaper in the world constantly.

19:37It's global policy debates. And the big shift there is it's no longer, in my mind, cute or very effective to show up in these communities as kind of an outsider with no respect. I actually think that if you're looking for partners, if you're looking to do business with governments, if you're looking for capital, there's actually like a very new culture that has to permeate, which is, yes, you have the technology. Yes, you show up with a product. But I think you also have to know as a founder how to show up with humility, how to show up with respect, how to show up and demonstrate that you're someone that other people can trust in a way that just hasn't been true historically.

20:11And so, look, the long story short on etiquette school is we're having this discussion. You have a lot of YC founders right now who are, by the way, younger than they've ever been or been in a long time, who don't have... How old are they typically right now? Oh, I don't know. They're pretty... They're under 25, I believe. There's been a lot of reporting on this, how they average YC recently with AI founders actually going down, right? So it's not more experienced founders. It's not people coming out of the industry. It's even younger people. And they don't have the skills to show up, not only with venture capitalists, but with partners to recruit, et cetera.

20:42We said, look, YC is teaching them a lot. That's great. But there's a bunch of other skills that they could really use a crash course in. And so, look, I think it's caused a lot of debate because the whole YC thing or a lot of the incubator thing is all that matters is product market fit. I think that is an old way of thinking. I think it's not that product market fit doesn't matter. It obviously does. And you should iterate on that. But we're here and we kind of set up a school. We'll do more of them to help founders with all the other skills that really do matter in an era where trust is at a premium.

21:10And so what does YC think of this? Well, Gary Tan hasn't been super excited about it, to say the least. You know, I think internally on their book face platform, he was pretty clear that he doesn't think people should attend and should only be focused on product market fit. It's just not something I agree with. That's fine. It's no disrespect for Gary or YC. It's just I do think that when I think about the people I want to back. I think it is people who make that effort and are willing to make that effort and learn how to kind of be, show up in different spaces, you know, with grace, with humility, and build trust with partners where it's never mattered more for tech.

21:44I have to say, I was half expecting you to show up in a suit today. I thought you're going to be wearing a tie given the whole topic. I think this is the thing is that people, people like there's obviously, this is a fun idea. Obviously, it's a little irreverent and a little silly you know i love that stuff it has yeah you have to have that stuff to cut through in 2025 there's no right that said i do think there's a whole thing like what is etiquette etiquette is not you know in our school is not what we're trying to people is not you know how to be an elitist right and it's not how to show up wearing a suit all the time in fact i'd actually argue that's culturally quite insensitive um what it is is understanding like how to read a room how to enter that room with you know humility how to kind of mirror the culture you're entering whether it's banking or consulting or government or whatever it is, and show up on terms that put people at ease and build trust, right?

22:33So I actually would argue that showing up on a pseudo-TI TV is fun, but not actually the point of what we're teaching. Right, right. So let's get into the brass tacks of the program here. So how many people showed up and are you charging for this? No, of course we're not charging for this. Please. Okay. How many people were there? I don't know. How much truth would that be? Maybe this is the next big, you know, I know you're an education guy. Maybe this is a school you're starting. No, it's not a for-profit one, at least not directly. No, I mean, I will say the business motive for this is simple, which is like, I actually really would love to meet founders who are coming in with great ideas that have new takes on markets, etc., but also have the perspective and humility and are actually eager to learn how to show up in spaces.

23:15So selfishly, it's great to meet the people who show up in these things. For V1, I think we had about 100 people request to access. We only had room for about 50. So it was about 50 people in the room. There's a pretty long wait list. We'll certainly be doing more of these. In fact, since we've done them, we've had requests from founders in New York and Tel Aviv, all over the world to come and do finishing schools for them. And I think there's a lot of markets and places where this is even more relevant. So we'll be doing more of these. I think it's a good template. And, you know, like any good V1, we learned a lot.

23:45You know, we had a lot of fun. We did obviously the fun things like wine and caviar and dressing and that, but also the really important things that matter no matter what the scenario is, which is, you know, as a young founder, how do you show up at an investor meeting? How do you show up at a holiday party relevant right now? You know, how do you show up, you know, with partners? You know, those types of things really, really do matter. I think are very teachable. So Thanksgiving is coming up. The holiday season is coming up. For the founders who are watching, what tips do you have? How do you show up?

24:16What are some things they should keep in mind? Well, okay. With your family? Forget that, okay. Let me tell you this. When you show up with your family, the key is to not talk only about your startup. Have something interesting to say other than your startup. Bring a gift for your mom. Set the table. These are not - Right. I was more thinking holiday party vibes. Talk to me a little bit about - The holiday parties in Silicon Valley, here's the number one tip I think we give people, which is people don't want a holiday party to be stuck in a long conversations about the details at your startup.

24:52And the thing we always talk about with people is, and we talked about in this session is, it's great to have the, hey, it's nice to meet you, look someone in the eye, shake their hand, they ask what you do, you answer. But don't give them every detail of your startup and how you got there in the YC experience. Don't get people stuck in conversations because what you want is to leave people saying, wow, that's a really interesting point or really, you know, confident, some nice person. And they, you want to leave them asking more of you, not kind of waylaying them in the corner and explaining every tell their startup and making them feel like you're effectively taking their time so there's a really interesting thing about what the exchange of time is at these holiday parties how to circulate through the room how to show up in a way that feels humble and excited but i would argue with an abundance mindset meaning those are going to be another opportunity this isn't your only opportunity to talk to the specific venture capitalist right um you have to have some a quiet confidence about that to kind of, I think, show up well.

25:47And so the key is what? Just to, I mean, it's to be well-read, to consume content, to have interesting things to say, really. Well, I think the answer is well-read is a broad thing. I think you need to be able to talk about something other than just your startup. And I think you need to leave with the mentality of your goal is not to say everything on your mind and have someone leave with a full picture of what it is that you do, etc., but more an impression that this is a trustworthy person working on interesting things and know that if they want to learn more or be more in touch or spend more time with you speaking.

26:17That's kind of their option, not you waylaying them in the corner for a 25-minute conversation they don't want to be in. Right. Well, great. Sam, it's always a pleasure to have you back on the show, and we'll have you back again soon whenever you're hosting the next Etiquette Finishing School. You guys are welcome. Talk to you soon. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Okay. Week after week, we have seen enterprise software companies way deeper into AI agents, so much that many of their products have started to converge entirely. Today, we published a story looking at that exact trend. My colleague Aaron Holmes wrote a deep dive looking at the ways in which customers of these enterprise software companies like Snowflake and even startups like Sierra are all crowding in on the same turf, and I want to bring him on to tell us more about what he's found.