👋 Good morning. And, if your beloved is a flower person, maybe goodbye? A dozen roses are expected to cost an average of $93.07 this Valentine's Day, according to FinanceBuzz, a 16% increase from 2023. If you live in Indiana, though, romance might still be on the menu: The state came in with the lowest average cost for 12 stems at a projected $71.99. That’s a far cry from Hawaii’s estimated $126.65, where dates should be bracing for chocolates instead.
STARTING UP
This startup wants you to wear your socks outside
❌ The problem: It’s frowned upon — and plain old unhygienic — to wear your socks out of the house.
💡 The pitch: While those too scared to dream bigger might have accepted that truth, Cornell-trained textile designer Sarah Fiszel was unwilling to accept socks’ confines. She founded Brave Pudding, a footwear brand that makes shoes from recycled cashmere socks, reinforced with aerated insoles and recycled rubber outsoles.
🚀 The outlook: Fiszel began selling the shoes on Instagram before prototyping and manufacturing iterations of the product and selling directly to consumers.
NEWS FLASH
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Now what? OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, who coined “vibe coding,” says “agentic engineering” is next, per Business Insider. Whereas vibe coding is when humans ask AI to write code, agentic engineering is when AI writes code on its own.
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Grid optional: ElectricFish has developed a new EV fast charger to allow high-speed charging in remote locations. Its system uses built-in battery storage, meaning it pulls less power from the grid, and can be installed in weeks versus months.
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Got junk, want milk? The Modern Milkman, a UK dairy delivery service, will start collecting unwanted toys and electronics for recycling when it drops off grocery items. UK households throw away ~2m metric tons of electronic waste annually.
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Great, another nosy coworker: Gather AI, a warehouse inventory management startup that uses autonomous drones designed to be “curious” in order to discover and predict potential issues, raised $40m, per TechCrunch. Bonus: They’re fine working in freezers and cold storage, unlike us delicate humans.
VIDEO MAGIC
8 prompts for dazzling AI clips
Don’t think of it like text-to-video… It’s more like ingredients-to-video.
AI clip creation, boiled down, goes like this:
- Storyboard some absurd idea
- Generate consistent reference images
- Stitch up the prettiest 8-second snippets
And voila. Will Smith nommin’ on spaghett, or whatever you want.
THE BIG IDEA
Will AI find soccer’s next MVP?
An estimated 300m+ people play soccer worldwide, but only a fraction of them ever make it to the big leagues, or really any league. This includes those who might have what it takes but lack the opportunity to prove it, often due to geographic and economic barriers.
But the odds are better for today’s generation of aspiring soccer stars — wherever they happen to be — thanks to AI-powered scouting tools that are democratizing the sport by helping them get in front of the people who call the shots.
One example is aiScout, a free app by UK-based Ai.io, which Fast Company named one of 2025’s top 10 most innovative companies in sports.
How it works
- Athletes record videos of themselves completing different drills and submit them to clubs with open trials through the app.
- AI then analyzes and scores their performance against academy benchmarks, using computer vision to track over 20 body points.
- Athletes get data-driven feedback, while clubs and scouts are able to review and analyze the data to find potential players.
This way, Ai.io’s chief operating officer Richard Felton-Thomas told CNN, scouts can make better use of their time, while teams benefit from a bigger talent pool, meaning a better chance of finding soccer’s next big star.
How it’s going
The app, which officially launched in 2023, claims 100k+ users, including 350 athletes who’ve found success with pro clubs.
- For example: Ben Greenwood, who at age 17 had never been scouted, scored a trial with Chelsea FC after uploading videos of himself playing to the app. He went on to play for pro club AFC Bournemouth and, later, the Republic of Ireland.
India’s Reliance Foundation uses the app to award five-year sports scholarships to 11-year-olds, including one who reportedly used a shared community phone to upload footage of himself and was selected despite having never played an organized sport.
The International Olympic Committee has also piloted the tech, in rural Senegal, to scout potential future Olympians.
Next…
… the company plans to expand its tech to include football, basketball, baseball, and cricket — and, eventually, maybe even beyond sports, with Felton-Thomas noting potential applications in health care, physical evaluations for military service, and more.
But, for now, here’s to leveling the playing field.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Go behind the scenes: Spend 24 hours with a startup raising a $50m funding round.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
How many US restaurant orders were eaten outside of restaurants in 2024, up ~2x from 2019, according to National Restaurant Association data. The New York Times found that while on-demand food delivery has helped burned-out workers and parents save time and energy, even if it means stretching budgets, it’s also changed the way Americans eat, with fewer people dining in restaurants and cooking at home.
Plus, many people are ordering food impulsively, which one expert told NYT can hinder the development of crucial skills, like planning ahead and problem solving, and longer-term financial investments. But who needs homeownership when you could satisfy that chocolate cake craving right now, huh?
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: in 1996, chess champ Garry Kasparov lost the first of six matches against Deep Blue, IBM’s supercomputer. Ultimately, however, Kasparov won three games and tied two, defeating the computer and winning a $400k prize.
☕ Chill out: with a little mid-work distraction break.
🌮 Useful: Find the cheapest way to order Taco Bell.
📰 Newsletter: Quartz AI & Tech unpacks the real-world impact shaping the future of AI.
🦝 Aww: A strange encounter.
SHOWER THOUGHT
There are people being born who will never know a world without AI. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Mildly valuable person" Friedman.
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