🤬 Taming of the streamer

Plus: A pricey shellfish heist, guess the video game, and more. 

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here You're just 3 referrals away from earning a Hustle Essentials kit. Check out all of our prizes here. Share your link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 👋  Good morning. What time should we come to your housewarming at your new Texas digs? No, we're not psychic — just taking an educated guess. Texas was the most moved-to state for the seventh time in 10 years, according to U-Haul data. Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee followed behind, while California saw the most people move out for the sixth consecutive year.  STARTING UP Finally, a robot you can cuddle  ❌  The problem: Animal companions can be incredibly helpful for seniors and people with dementia, but live animals aren't always a realistic option. While companion robots exist, they're often shiny, hard, and far from comforting.  💡  The pitch: Tombot created Jennie, a plush, robotic yellow dog designed to sit in a user's lap and respond to touch, voice, and movement like a real pup. Tombot's founder Tom Stevens developed Jennie when his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and had to rehome her dog, per Inc. 🚀  The outlook: Stevens said investors were initially lukewarm on the concept, but, after word of Jennie's cuteness circulated through CES 2025, the company had 5k+ pre-orders and closed a $6.1m Series A round soon after. Tombot will start shipping this summer and is expecting a ~$100m raise in 2027 to bring its puppies around the world.   NEWS FLASH   Pill bot: Utah is conducting a pilot with Doctronic, a startup that makes AI medical tools for doctors, in which an AI chatbot handles prescription renewals of 190 common medications for patients with chronic conditions, excluding medications with potential for abuse. "Git good" no more: Rather than figuring out how to beat "Elden Ring" or paying someone to play "Path of Exile" for you, let a bot do it. PlayStation maker Sony has apparently filed a patent for an AI "ghost" that would take over if a video game got too hard. Tasty tunes: Lollipop Star unveiled a lollipop that plays music while you suck on it by sending vibrations through your skull bones to your ear. It comes in three flavors and plays three artists: Ice Spice, Akon, or Armani White. Taking off: Air taxi startup Joby bought a new 700k-square-foot manufacturing facility in Ohio for $61.5m with the intention of doubling production to four eVTOLs per month by 2027. The startup hopes to achieve FAA approval this year. FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM AI ate your delivery pizza    A DoorDash driver was booted from the platform after allegedly uploading an AI-generated proof of delivery image.    While DoorDash said it has a zero tolerance policy for fraud — and uses a mix of human eyes and tech to spot it — the incident is just another example of the ways AI tools can be misused.    Dinner from our favorite restaurant is where we draw the line.  👉  Read more on Mindstream   THE BIG IDEA Streamer Mtashed displaying an ad for "Kingdom Come: Deliverance II" (Courtesy of NexTide) The startup that makes livestreaming safer for advertisers In 2022, gaming site BonusFinder released a study of 16 video games to see which elevated players' heart rates the most. Surprisingly, "Mario Kart" came in first, boosting players' BPM by an average of 32.8%, higher than even "Call of Duty" or the notoriously hard "Dark Souls."  As anyone who's watched a fave Twitch streamer knows, the stress — and occasional rage — of a hectic game can mean curses, insults, or other problematic language, making livestreaming a potential minefield for advertisers. But NexTide Media has a solution NexTide connects brands to 700+ livestreamers and provides the infrastructure to advertise across platforms including Twitch, YouTube Live, and Kick, opening up new audiences — including younger demographics — for advertisers and new revenue streams for creators. "We look at it as the extension of traditional digital [marketing]. Each streamer, to us, is like their own publisher. So we use their channel — their space — to be able to promote to their audiences," Alexander Guerrero, NexTide CEO and founder, told The Hustle.   Livestreaming is popular among gamers, representing an industry that generated an estimated $187B in revenue in 2024. That's a lot of eyeballs, and potentially a lot of dollars.  But NexTide found brands were "terrified" due to live content's unpredictability, and created LiveGuard, a patent-pending, AI-powered safety platform that helps prevent ads from appearing alongside NSFW or controversial content. How it works Creators agree to feature ads within their content. This can include banner ads or pop-ups that respond to various in-game or user actions. For example, a jumpscare to promote an upcoming horror movie in response to something a typed in chat window. Brands can choose what content or specific keywords they don't want to be associated with. Some may be OK with swearing or more adult games, while others may adopt stricter policies. LiveGuard constantly monitors content and analyzes its context. For example, Guerrero said, it can tell if a streamer is talking about their friend named Dick or using that same word in a derogatory way. If it identifies a problem, it can alert advertisers for manual review or automatically pause campaigns for 30-60 minutes.  Chief product officer JJ Liebig also noted that livestream clips often go viral on other platforms, like Reddit and TikTok, meaning advertisers can avoid being forever tied to (or paying for) content that goes viral for the wrong reasons, but get a boost from fun content. Who could ever forget Leeroy Jenkins? 🔗 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   Followers are so last year. Here's how a TikTok marketing expert actually drives sales.  NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Value of a truckload of lobsters stolen from a Massachusetts facility last month, where a crab shipment was also lifted just days earlier, per Forbes. Cargo thefts, which account for an estimated $35B in annual losses, are on the rise nationwide, thanks to what some industry experts hypothesize to be partnerships between organized crime rings and cybercriminals.   Food-and-beverage items, like shellfish, are especially vulnerable since, unlike other lucrative cargo, they don't usually come with barcodes. They do, however, come with expiration dates — the crustaceans, which were destined for Costco, have not been found, though by now they wouldn't be safe to eat anyway.   AROUND THE WEB 📆  On this day: In 1946, Elvis Presley received his first guitar as a gift from his mother. He was 11 years old. 🗓️  Useful: A 2026 calendar you can print on a single page. 🗞️  Newsletter: Want to get smarter about financial markets? Join Opening Bell Daily. 🎮  Game: This game will likely only appeal to, well, gamers. Guess the video game based on its Steam achievements. 🐱  Aww: Let's all go for a walk. SHOWER THOUGHT The stereotypical "cartoon monkey" does not actually look like any monkey species that exists in real life. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Sara "Twitch, please" Friedman.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.   Working on something big? We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you. Subscribe to our other newsletters Stay up-to-date on AI: Mindstream  |  Expert insights: Masters in Marketing  |  Sell better: The Science of Scaling Follow The Hustle on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. 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