🫟  The liquid meal boom

👋  Good morning. Here’s a technological advancement sure to blow you over: Researchers at the University of Maryland developed “smart underwear,” a tiny electrochemical sensor that snaps onto underwear to measure hydrogen and other gases expelled by the digestive system. The tool was built for the Human Flatus Atlas, a first-of-its-kind study to get to the bottom of passing gas.   

STARTING UP

You’ve got male 

❌  The problem: Mail-in semen tests struggle to deliver clinically reliable motility data, limiting how useful they are.

💡  The pitch: Male fertility startup Legacy launched what it claims is the first at-home semen analysis to deliver a full clinical motility profile. Its proprietary algorithm adjusts for how motility declines over time and it delivers results in ~20 hours, compared to 28+ hours for competitors, preserving an average of 11% more motility than other mail-in kits — a big deal for IUI and IVF applications.

🚀  The outlook: Legacy says its shipping and lab system is already being used by 400+ clinics across the US, serving IVF clinics, urologists, OB-GYNs, and family practitioners.

NEWS FLASH

• Haven’t pigeons been through enough? Apparently not, because Russian startup Neiry says it’s equipped pigeons with neural implants that turn them into drones (without, it claims, harming them). Potential use cases include search and rescue, infrastructure inspection, and surveillance.
  

• General Galactic aims to turn water into rocket fuel, an idea that, per Wired, has been frequently discussed but never achieved. The startup will attempt to orbit a 1.1k-pound satellite using water (and a lot of fascinating science) as its only propellant this fall.

• Hmm: A Harvard Business Review study examined a tech company that embraced AI. It found that any time AI freed up, employees filled with more work, often working the same amount or more and leading to “fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that work is harder to step away from.”

• McDonald’s began giving away caviar kits yesterday, meant to be served on… Chicken McNuggets. The Valentine’s promo includes a 1-ounce tin of caviar, crème fraîche, a spoon, and a $25 gift card for said nuggets. Apparently, people — including Rihanna — have been trying this unique combo for a while now.
  
  

MODERN MARKETING

10 AI prompts to reimagine marketing 

AI mangled marketing as we knew it. Today’s consumers are wired to watch more, click less, and convert from all over the funnel. 

Don’t delve further into 2026 with the same old, antiquated plays. Here are 10 clever AI prompts to help steer your business toward riches. 

Commands for smarter marketing:

• 📝  Audit content planning
• 🔎  Refind lost search leads
• 💌  Personalize emails
• 🎥  Create short video clips
• 📊  Generate traffic + demand
• 🙅‍♀️  Avoid AI slop

The rebuild may hurt a lot at first, but tends to end up heavenly.

THE BIG IDEA

Out with the chew and in with the goo

If you’ve ever envied a nearly toothless baby sucking down a pouch of fruits and veggies, you’ll be delighted to know you can now join in on the fun. 

While many adults do have teeth, they don’t have time — especially burned-out millennials. But those sleepy consumers still care a lot about their health, sending many in search of a quick, mindless solution. 

Enter: goo

For those too tired to meal plan or prep, a growing number of meal-replacement companies are promising nutrition, hold the chewing. And the sector is growing faster than a rehydrated blueberry, per The New York Times:

• Liquid+, which touts a “liquid salad,” saw December 2025 sales surpass $100k after going viral on TikTok.
  
• Huel makes ready-to-drink shakes, powdered meals, and dehydrated hot options. The company reported $289m in revenue in July 2024, a 16% YoY increase. After introducing its products in Costco and Target, its US retail revenue jumped by more than 300%.
   
• Ka’Chava makes “all-in-one nutrition shakes” that cost $70 for a bag of powder. 

It’s not a brand-new concept: Soylent walked so these on-the-go meals could run. Created by a software engineer in 2013, the Silicon Valley meal replacement became emblematic of toxic work culture. 

Though less sinister…

… today’s meal replacements come with their own concerns. For one: Do we have teeth for a reason? Dietitians say “maybe.” 

Plus, a recent Consumer Reports analysis found that many meal-replacement powders and shakes contain more lead in a single serving than a person should consume in a day. 

• The potential perk: As GLP-1 use explodes, nutrient-packed meal replacements could pack more nutrients into shrinking appetites.  

So, will all your meals be liquid soon? Probably not. 

But with the global meal-replacement sector projected to be worth $37B by 2030, we suggest keeping a straw handy.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Westminster Dog Show: It’s the Super Bowl for poofy pups. But how much do the winners take home? We break down the economics.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Attendees at the March for Billionaires event in San Francisco over the weekend, per the San Francisco Chronicle, who were reportedly outnumbered by journalists and hecklers. 

Among them: several pro-billionaire non-billionaires, like organizer Derik Kauffman, who were presumably upset about California’s proposed Billionaire Tax Act, a law that would impose a one-time, 5% tax on residents worth $1B+ and wouldn’t affect them at all. 

HOW YOU HUSTLE

Our readers are always cooking up cool ideas. Here’s our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader working on something big.

Who: Alex Morel

What: Andiem 

The elevator pitch: “Andiem is building an injury-free future for sports, making gear to enhance natural movement and prevent the most common injuries.”

The problem they’re trying to solve: “Our patented, medically backed tech addresses the most common athletic injury: ankle sprains. In the US there are ~25k ankle sprains per day and they cause ~2m ER visits every year. It’s a huge problem, impacting millions of people and existing solutions don’t work. We’re starting in basketball (the most ankle injuries), before expanding into additional sports and use cases (military, elderly, etc.) to help people move better and do more.”

One piece of advice for a fellow entrepreneur: “Startups are a family affair: your co-founder becomes your unofficial life partner and your life partner becomes an unofficial co-founder. But this is one time in life you can choose your family. So choose wisely and make sure everyone is on board.”

What are you working on? Tell us here.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1778, ~300 people gathered to greet playwright and poet Voltaire upon his return to Paris. He’d been exiled for 28 years after satirizing politics and religion in his works. 

🧩  Game: Find the correct path to spell the word. 

📚  How to: read more — and do it better. 

📰  Newsletter: The Assist is full of actionable tips for problem-solving go-getters who want to become better professionals. 

🐦  Aww: The cutest view. 

SHOWER THOUGHT

If you think money buys happiness, that means you still have hope. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Fork, no" Friedman.

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