January 8, 2026

Bank on it

Hi there,

Our State of Venture 2025 report is out now. Get it here.

Here is this week's Hot or Not.

Hot: AI at retail banks

AI is now a universal focus for retail banks, with use cases from fraud prevention to customer service.

But our analysis shows a widening gap. A small group of leaders has built the capabilities required to scale AI workflows:

• JPMorgan Chase leads the AI Readiness Index with a coordinated strategy across internal builds, partnerships, and equity investments
• Citigroup has 180K colleagues using proprietary AI tools, generating 100K hours of weekly capacity
• Bank of America has filed over 2x as many AI-related patents as JPMorgan Chase since 2023 despite having less than half its market cap

See which retail banks are ready to scale autonomous AI in CB Insights' full readiness index.

Not: Manual driving

Autonomous driving is finally entering a phase of commercial deployment:

• Waymo operates 2K+ robotaxis completing 250K+ weekly paid rides 
• Baidu's Apollo Go logged over 17M rides in China
• Tesla launched its robotaxi service in June 2025

See 90+ private companies building the autonomous driving stack in CB Insights' latest market map.

Hot: AI coders

AI coding tools just crossed $4B in annual revenue, with the top 3 players capturing over 70% of the market.

GitHub Copilot, Anthropic's Claude Code, and Cursor (from Anysphere) have all surpassed $1B in ARR. 

And investor confidence remains strong: Anysphere and Lovable recently raised at 30x and 33x revenue multiples, up from 20x and 18x earlier this year.

See CB Insights' full breakdown of who's winning the AI coding race.

Not: Short lifespans

NuraLogix just released an AI-powered longevity mirror that scans users’ bodies to predict their health trajectory.

The launch signals growing consumer appetite for longevity tech, a market that's attracted $6.6B in funding since 2022. 

From at-home diagnostics to senolytic therapies, startups are racing to commercialize lifespan extension. 

See all 200+ companies working to help us live longer in our longevity tech market map.

The +1

Source: u/Stt022 via Reddit

Grocery wars. Every number is wrong.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Want to learn about the predictive signals shaping 2026? Register for our briefing on this year’s tech trends.

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