The Future of War Is Built on X.com it seems.

Last week wasn’t normal.

A drone startup got noticed by the U.S. military thanks to a Twitter video. An AI dev tool rejected OpenAI. And two ex-Airbnb engineers raised $12M to build bots that log in, click around, and grab data from any website no integrations needed.

Let’s get into it.

Theseus: GPS-Free Combat Drones 🚁 ($4.3M Raised)

Founded: 2024 by Ian Laffey, Sacha Lévy & Carl Schoeller
Backers: Y Combinator, 8VC, Soma Capital

Three engineers met at a hackathon. They then proceeded to build a drone that doesn’t need GPS. The drone figures out where it is just using just a camera and Google Maps. That means it can fly underground, indoors, anywhere signals die. Good luck hiding from that thing.

They posted a demo on Twitter. It blew up. YC accepted them. VCs wired $4.3M. And the U.S. military came calling.

Now Theseus is working with special forces to test GPS-free drones in real combat zones.

Why It Matters:
Defense tech is slow and full of red tape. Theseus skipped all of it by shipping something that worked and letting the internet do the selling. No grant. No paperwork. Just a good demo and the right eyeballs.

Deck: Agents That Skip APIs 🔌 ($12M Raised)

Founded: 2024 by Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf, Frederick Lavoie & Bruno Lambert
Backers: a16z, Point72, SV Angel

Deck is building browser-based agents that log into websites, click around like a human, and pull clean data no integrations, no API keys, no begging. Want Stripe analytics? Notion content? Your crusty HR portal history? It scrapes it all.

They’re calling it “Plaid for the rest of the internet.” Messy? Yes. Useful? Extremely.

Why It Matters:
APIs break, get rate-limited, or don’t exist. Deck skips the API and just grabs what’s on the page. It’s like brute-force automation and in startup land, speed > permission.

Cursor: The AI Coding Tool That Rejected OpenAI 💻

Founded: 2022 by Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger & Michael Truell
Backers: OpenAI Startup Fund

Cursor is a dev tool that bakes ChatGPT into your coding workflow. You can write, refactor, and debug inside your editor like you’ve got a genius co-founder whispering suggestions but never taking over your keyboard.

OpenAI reportedly tried to acquire them. Cursor said no. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s now trying to buy Windsurf (another code assistant) for $3B. But Cursor’s still the one developers actually use.

Why It Matters: There are a hundred AI coding tools. Most are shiny wrappers. Cursor works where real devs live. And turning down your own infrastructure provider? Bold. But bold builds trust.

🔥 MEME BREAK 🔥

What You Can Learn From This Issue

Execution > permission.

Theseus didn’t wait for approval. They posted a video. That one clip got them into YC, $4.3M in funding, and a phone call from the U.S. military.

Deck didn’t beg for access. They built something that scraped the internet and made it usable and raised millions doing it.

Cursor didn’t take the OpenAI buyout. They kept building the product people actually wanted and they’re winning because of it.

The point?
They didn’t ask. They just did it.

You don’t need credentials, connections, or some perfect setup.
You need something real that works and the guts to put it out there.

One idea. One product. One post.
That’s all it takes.

💡 Startup Idea of the Week: QuitNote ✍️

Resigning? Let AI write the letter. You pick the tone, chill, savage, delusional, spiritual etc. It gives you a clean doc to send, post, or print and burn in front of your boss. It also comes with a leaderboard of the most unhinged quits of the month.

Why It Works: Everyone wants to quit. Most don’t know how to write the letter. This does it for them and adds a little spice. Bonus points if you go viral.

Verdict: Someone uses it, hits 10M views on TikTok, and you sell to a resume company for $500K. Chaos wins again.

📢 One Last Thing!

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See you next week. Same time. Same place.

— The FOMO Report Team