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What’s on tap today:

• Podcast

• Our interview with Brian Grech

• Weekly Headline Recap

• What's trending in AI this week

• Community Update

• How Homebase Helps You

🎙️ This Week’s Interview

AI Founder Story

Rewriting the Payments Playbook: From False Declines to Found Revenue

Quick Background

Brian Grech, Co-founder of Corgi Labs, is attacking one of commerce’s most invisible but expensive leaks: false declines. With leadership roles at JP Morgan, PayPal, and Bank of America, Brian has spent two decades mastering payments—and is now building tools that return billions in lost sales to digital merchants.

The Hidden Leak in Payments

Fraud hurts, but the silent killer is worse: false declines. These are real customers, rejected by blunt fraud models. For many sellers, that’s 2–15% of revenue erased—without warning.

The Untold Opportunity

Picture losing 1 in 10 genuine buyers, not to fraudsters, but because your own system flagged them as “risky.” That’s not leakage—it’s an epidemic throttling e-commerce and SaaS growth.

Key Achievements & Insights:

The Problem Today →

Fraud filters built for Silicon Valley delivery giants don’t translate to a Manila jewelry shop. SMBs across verticals are unknowingly burning millions on false declines.

The Breakthrough →

Instead of one-size-fits-all rules, Corgi Labs trains a precision AI model for each merchant—powered by their own transaction history.

The Proof Story →

Onboarding merchants typically see 3–8% revenue lifts overnight—without spending an extra dollar on marketing.

The Big Example →

Subscription businesses plagued by failed auto-renewals now see churn fall and retention climb once Corgi’s models kick in.

From Problem to Payoff (Executive Lens)

Why It Matters

AI isn’t just stopping fraud—it’s unlocking trapped revenue. For SMBs, that’s survival. For enterprises, it’s pure upside.

Watch the full interview below! 👇

The Ultimate Lesson

From PayPal Pixie Dust to Startup Grit

At PayPal, Brian helped create PayPal Working Capital—scaling it into a billion-dollar product copied by Square and Stripe. His mission at Corgi Labs: deliver tools so magical that merchants never want to leave.

Resilience in a Scarce Capital Market

Fundraising is tougher than ever, but Brian insists most founders overestimate their VC needs. With SaaS + AI, five people can do the work of 25—and go further on less.

Curious how Brian predicts AI will reshape finance—and what founders must do to thrive in today’s brutal funding climate? — Read the full interview →

HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap

• Nebius & Microsoft’s $17.4B AI Power Move

  A record-shattering $17.4 billion deal signals skyrocketing demand for next-gen AI infrastructure.

  👉See what’s driving this surge?

• Anthropic Pays Record $1.5B Copyright Settlement

  Anthropic settles the largest copyright case in AI history—here’s why the industry is on edge.

  👉What triggered this payout?

• ASML Bets $1.5B on Mistral Partnership

  ASML’s game-changing investment in Mistral cements a powerful new tech alliance in Europe.

  👉Why this alliance matters?

• ID.Me Raises $340M to Battle AI Threats

  ID.Me lands $340 million to ramp up defenses against rising waves of AI-powered identity attacks.

  👉What’s their secret weapon?

• Musk’s $1 Trillion Pay Saga Gets Messy

  Elon Musk’s massive xAI proposal and shareholder drama stir fresh controversy.

  👉What’s at stake for Musk?

TRENDS
What's trending in AI

FastAPI

• Key Player: FastAPI is a blazing-fast Python web framework streamlining API development with built-in type validation and interactive docs.

• Market Value: Over 84,000 GitHub stars—now Python’s most popular backend API framework.

• Adoption: Used at scale by giants like Microsoft, Netflix, ByteDance, and Uber for high-performance APIs and ML workloads.

• Recent Developments: Hit usage parity with Django; new dev tools, expanded async support, and production adoption for ML and microservices.

Growth: +99X since launch and adding thousands of new teams every month.

Why It Matters: Combines top-tier speed, robust validation, async support, and effortless docs—making it the gold standard for modern Python APIs.

The Big Picture: FastAPI leads a new era of efficient, maintainable, and AI-ready backend infrastructure across industries.

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