Welcome to Homebase AI - A weekly newsletter where we share our interviews with founders & leaders building next-gen AI companies and curate interesting news, insights & trends in the AI space for our community members.
What’s on tap today:
Podcast
Our interview with João Ferrão
Weekly Headline Recap
What's trending in AI this week
Community Update
How Homebase Helps You
🎙️ This Week’s Interview
AI Founder Story
From Idea To Content In 5 minutes
Quick Background
What happens when you challenge GPT-4 to build a company with just $1,000 and one human hour a day?
João Ferrão dos Santos did exactly that—and the internet couldn’t look away. One LinkedIn post snowballed into 5M+ views, $100K raised, and global press.
But João didn’t stop at virality. He turned chaos into a system—and built Crafted, an AI ghostwriting tool that converts raw WhatsApp voice notes into top-performing LinkedIn posts in five minutes flat.
From Viral Experiment to Strategic AI Tool
The experiment revealed more than the power of reach—it exposed a paradox: innovators build startups, yet most ignore the highest-ROI channel—consistent, credible, organic content.
Executives know posting matters, but time, fear, and “what do I even say?” stall the habit. Crafted removes each blocker and makes shipping the default.
Crafted: The Magic Button for Content Creation
Think of Crafted as a red button for visibility: record a 60–120s voice note in WhatsApp → get a draft with a strong hook, your tone, and zero “AI slop.”
Layer in 1:1 mentoring for positioning and accountability, and leadership teams turn into a company-wide thought engine—without ghostwriter lag.
Try this once today: record, review, ship. The habit starts here.
Key Achievements & Insights:
The Problem Today →
Startups overspend on ads while leaders stay silent—leaving thousands of daily, free impressions on the table.
The Breakthrough →
Frictionless, speech-first creation turns even the busiest execs into visible operators. No blank page, no performative fluff.
The Proof Story →
Series A and Series C pilots show full leadership benches posting weekly with minimal effort and maximal credibility.
The Big Example →
One client saw a 10× lift in impressions once multiple leaders posted 1–2×/week, instead of relying on the CEO alone.
Why It Matters
The winners won’t outspend competitors. They’ll out-post them, compounding trust, talent, and pipeline.
And traction is proving it: Crafted now brings in $10k/month in revenue with active clients including an M&A law firm in London, an InsurTech company (London), AI-driven teams like Agents and Notetakers (SF/global), and a FinTech x AI venture in NYC.
Watch the full interview below! 👇
The Ultimate Lesson
Write your next post with this five-piece skeleton; refine on the next rep.
Behavior Change Over Tools
Software can’t cure fear or fuzziness; mentorship + AI creates accountability, clarity, and a cadence leaders stick to.
Post Like You Talk
Spontaneous voice notes become authentic posts—cutting creation time from hours to minutes, while sounding exactly like you.
How does a 90-second voice note become a high-performing post that still sounds like you—and how do teams keep that pace week after week?
HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap
xAI Rockets to $200B After $10B Burst
Elon Musk’s AI giant reportedly closes a fresh $10B round, vaulting the company to a staggering $200B valuation amid breakneck spend on compute.
Nscale Snags $1.1B to Build AI Data Centers
Nvidia-backed Nscale raises $1.1B from Nvidia, Dell, Nokia and others to accelerate AI data-center rollouts across the U.S. and Europe.
Oracle x Meta Eye $20B AI Cloud Pact
Oracle is set to team up with Meta on a potential $20B AI cloud deal aimed at turbocharging European AI workloads.
Distyl AI Raises $175M at $1.8B
Enterprise AI builder Distyl lands a Series B at a 9x jump to a $1.8B valuation as demand for AI orchestration surges.
Palantir Wins Surprise Deal with 109‑Year‑Old Titan
Palantir expands from battlegrounds to boardrooms with a marquee AI contract from a century-old industrial heavyweight.
TRENDS
What's trending in AI
Contextual AI
Key Player: Enterprise RAG platform that builds production-grade AI applications using proprietary RAG 2.0 technology.
Market Value: Valued at $609 million after raising $80 million Series A in August 2024.
Adoption: Deployed by Fortune 500 companies including HSBC, Qualcomm, and Shipbob for knowledge management and technical support.
Recent Developments: Announced general availability of its enterprise platform in January 2025, outperforming GPT-4o and Claude 3.5.
Growth: Hit 4.4K search volume with explosive +3,233% growth since September 2024. The company successfully transitioned from stealth to serving multiple Fortune 500 clients within just over a year.
Why It Matters: Solves the critical gap between impressive AI demos and reliable production systems that enterprises actually need. Traditional RAG systems are often too brittle for mission-critical applications.
The Big Picture: Represents the next wave of enterprise AI where specialized agents transform high-value knowledge work. Addresses the 99% of AI's potential that remains untapped in specialized business applications.
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