Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
AI Has an Image Problem
I spent 2025 going from skeptical to genuinely excited about AI tools. My non-tech friends and family spent 2025 learning to hate them. The AI industry has fumbled this introduction so badly that we’ve turned a useful set of tools into a cultural flashpoint – but the damage isn’t irreversible.
Can A.I. Generate New Ideas? – The New York Times
Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-5 are accelerating research in math, biology and chemistry. But there is a debate over whether it can do that work on its own.
Agent-native Architectures: How to Build Apps After Code Ends
A technical guide for building applications where agents are first-class citizens.
25 years of Wikipedia
Today, Wikipedia is the backbone of knowledge on the internet—but everything has to start somewhere. For Wikipedia, that was a blank website and a dream.
Fractious Portland City Council finally breaks impasse, elects ‘reluctant hero’ as new president – oregonlive.com
Dunphy’s election caps a chaotic week at City Hall in which council factions remained deadlocked over their preferred picks, refused to budge and ratcheted up attacks on colleagues.
Press Release: Human Intelligence Expands Team in 2026 – Human Creator
Torres, a PSU graduate, comes to Human Intelligence® from a two-decade career as a senior marketing manager at Intel, where her copy and go-to-market expertise helped Intel establish itself in new markets and built out a groundbreaking new lead-gen strategy for the silicon market leader.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek taps Republican rival to boost business relations • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Beginning next week, Knopp will work in Kotek’s office alongside other staff, earning $191,658 a year. But it wasn’t long ago that he was a major thorn in the governor’s side.
Courtside with AI Portland (AI event + Blazers game!) – TICKETS ON SALE NOW, Tue, Feb 3, 2026, 6:00 PM | Meetup
The evening will start with a pre-game AI Portland gathering, featuring appetizers and a facilitated discussion about the realities of innovation and what it actually takes to operationalize AI inside an existing organization. This will be a grounded conversation about constraints, tradeoffs, and what happens in real organizations.
Junior Developers in the Age of AI – by Christine Miao
AI has changed a lot, but it hasn’t eliminated our responsibility to our young people. Leaders who don’t prioritize the next generation are failing to pay forward what was given to them.
Portland Remote Workers Club | Meetup
Portland Remote Workers Club is an online space for those who work remotely to learn from and grow with each other.
Elevate Capital Announces $1.6M Invested in Oregon Startups Through State-Backed Venture Program – Oregon Business
The investments reflect Elevate’s ongoing commitment to backing high-potential founders, expanding access to early-stage capital, and supporting long-term economic growth across Oregon. The capital was deployed through Oregon’s Venture Direct program, supported by the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI).
Port’s Robinhold on PDX redo and reviving Oregon’s economy – Portland Business Journal
The idea is to help identify short- and long-term opportunities, to have diverse interests — manufacturing and labor and timber and agriculture and some apparel folks in the room who can talk about how can we recruit more? How can we retain manufacturers who are here? How can we connect Oregonians to jobs in those places? So an element is workforce, but also business climate and what tools do we have at our disposal?