In a year defined by breakneck AI funding and ethical uncertainty, Cluely—a viral San Francisco startup that built its brand on helping users “cheat at everything”—has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

The fresh capital, announced Friday by cofounder and CEO Chungin “Roy” Lee, marks a bold endorsement of a product that toes the line between AI innovation and outright manipulation.

Cluely’s technology offers “undetectable” real-time AI assistance by seeing a user’s screen and feeding them contextual answers. Originally designed to help software engineers game job interviews, the tool has since expanded and sanitized its branding after Lee was suspended by Columbia University over its earliest version, known as “Interview Coder.”

Though references to cheating have been removed from Cluely’s website, the company has retained its provocative core identity—and now, a wave of high-profile investors.

“We backed Roy early because he brings a rare mix of vision and fearlessness,” said Bryan Kim, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “He’s a founder with the boldness to rethink what’s possible.”

Profitable and Viral—Despite Controversy

Lee claims that Cluely is already profitable, generating “millions of dollars in revenue” since its launch earlier this year. The company’s valuation has reportedly soared to around $120 million following this latest funding round. Previous investors Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures also participated in the raise, adding to a $5.3 million seed round earlier this year.

The startup is now preparing for a massive marketing push. Lee told Business Insider that his goal is to rack up 1 billion views across platforms.

“We’ll do pretty much whatever it takes to do that,” he said. To achieve it, Cluely is hiring 50 “growth interns” who will be required to post at least four TikToks a day.

In typical viral fashion, the company debuted with a tongue-in-cheek video showing Lee using Cluely to impress a date—an attempt that was both humorous and unsuccessful. But this shock-based marketing strategy is proving effective in a market where attention often trumps traditional credibility.

Performance Under Scrutiny

Despite its growing user base and strong early revenue, Cluely’s product has drawn skepticism from users and analysts. Several testers have noted significant flaws in its performance: laggy responses, hallucinated facts, and answers that don’t quite fit natural conversation.

Some reviewers describe Slick as a little creepy, and not quite ready for your next meeting.

But as it stands, investors appear more interested in potential than perfection—especially if a product taps into a viral niche and gains traction among younger, tech-savvy users.

Part of a Broader Niche-AI Boom

Cluely is only the latest example of a broader trend reshaping the AI startup landscape. As major players like OpenAI, Meta, and Google dominate foundation model development, nimble startups are capturing investor attention by focusing on highly specialized use cases:

• Hippocratic AI raised $65 million to develop AI agents tailored for healthcare support staff like nurses and insurance processors.
• Synthesia, which focuses on AI-generated corporate training videos, has raised more than $100 million.
• Rasa, a company building AI customer service infrastructure, recently secured $30 million.
• Harvey, an AI tool for legal professionals built on GPT-4, has attracted investment from Sequoia Capital and the OpenAI Startup Fund.

Many of these companies, including Cluely, are capitalizing on a sentiment spreading in venture capital: that the next great AI wave will come not from general-purpose models, but from tools solving narrow, practical problems—or, in Cluely’s case, pushing controversial boundaries with a Gen-Z edge.

The AI frenzy isn’t without backlash. Cluely’s initial pitch—helping people cheat on interviews—prompted an uproar in academic circles and even led to Lee’s temporary suspension from Columbia University. The startup has since rebranded its use cases, but the lingering questions about ethics haven’t gone away.

In that climate, startups like Cluely are thriving. Their formula? A niche product, a loud message, and just enough momentum to grab a16z’s attention.

What’s Next for Cluely?

With the new funds, Cluely is expected to double down on improving its product and aggressively expanding its user base. There’s also speculation that the company may pursue enterprise clients, such as onboarding tools or test preparation services, though Lee hasn’t confirmed such plans.

Time will tell whether Cluely evolves into a serious business platform or remains a flashy, meme-driven tool. However, one thing is certain: in 2025, AI startups that strike a cultural nerve—however controversially—are getting the capital they need to take off. For now, investors seem more than willing to bet that cheating the system might just be the next billion-dollar idea.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that System Restore points in Windows 11 will now be automatically deleted after 60 days, setting a clearer timeline for users relying on the feature to safeguard their PCs from software or configuration mishaps.

System Restore is a built-in recovery tool in Windows that lets users roll back system files, registry settings, and installed drivers to a previous, functional state—essentially offering a safety net when updates, driver installations, or configuration changes go wrong. Personal files such as documents and photos are not affected by the process.

However, the lifespan of those restore points has been a matter of confusion, with inconsistent behavior reported by users since Windows 11 debuted in 2021. While Windows 10 documentation suggested restore points could last up to 90 days, actual retention in Windows 11 was found to be inconsistent—often defaulting to just 10 days, depending on the system configuration and available disk space.

Now, in a new support document tied to the June 2025 security update for Windows 11 version 24H2, Microsoft has finally codified the rule: “After installing the June 2025 Windows security update, Windows 11, version 24H2 will retain system restore points for up to 60 days… Restore points older than 60 days are not available. This 60-day limit will also apply to future versions of Windows 11, version 24H2.”

Why It Matters

System Restore has long been considered a lightweight and quick recovery option, especially compared to full system backups or reinstalls. But its usefulness has always hinged on how long those recovery points are available.

Ten days is too short a window for many users to notice issues caused by bad drivers or failed updates—especially those who don’t use their computers daily. The new 60-day retention window offers a more reasonable timeframe, balancing data recovery flexibility with disk space management.

Windows will still automatically delete older restore points once the limit is reached—either due to the 60-day window or storage capacity constraints.

According to Windows Latest, which first reported on the updated retention policy, the new approach offers more clarity than past behavior: “This will give you multiple snapshots, but Windows will still delete the oldest ones once they exceed the retention window (now 60 days on Windows 11 24H2 by default).”

How to Manually Create a System Restore Point

While Windows does create restore points automatically before certain system changes (like major updates or driver installations), it’s good practice to manually create them as well—especially before installing new software, making system tweaks, or updating drivers.

Here’s how to manually create a restore point:

• Open the Start menu and search for “Create a restore point.”
• This will open the System Protection tab under System Properties.
• Under Protection Settings, select the drive where Windows is installed (typically C:), and click Configure.
• Ensure system protection is turned on for that drive.
• Click Create, name the restore point for easy identification (e.g., Before the driver update), and follow the prompts.

Your manually created restore point will remain available for 60 days unless storage limits require earlier deletion. Windows typically allocates a small percentage of disk space (often around 1-3%) for storing restore points, and once that fills up, older points are removed to make room for new ones.

Now that the 60-day expiration rule is official, experts recommend creating restore points every few weeks, especially for users who frequently install software, tweak settings, or test new configurations. For users with limited storage space, adjusting how much disk space is allocated for restore points may help preserve more recovery options.

Also worth noting: System Restore is disabled by default on some Windows 11 devices, particularly those with limited storage or OEM restrictions. Users should verify it’s enabled under System Protection.

With this clarification, Microsoft brings more transparency to one of its longest-standing recovery features. Though not as robust as full system backups, System Restore remains a vital part of Windows’ defense against unexpected issues—and now, with a known 60-day window, users can plan their protection strategies more effectively.

YouTube is about to dive even deeper into the AI age—and not everyone is excited about it. During his keynote at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Wednesday, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed that the platform will soon introduce a new tool that uses Google’s Veo 3 generative AI to create YouTube Shorts from scratch.

In essence, it’s an AI-powered factory line for vertical video content, capable of assembling fully generated Shorts with little to no human input. Google’s Veo 3, revealed earlier this year at Google I/O 2024, is capable of producing high-fidelity, 1080p video up to one minute long from a simple text prompt. The tool uses multimodal deep learning models that allow it to generate scenes, characters, motion, and even stylized visual effects—capabilities that are now being integrated into YouTube’s Shorts format.

“The possibilities with AI are limitless,” Mohan said during the keynote. “A lot can change in a generation. Entertainment itself has changed more in the last two decades than any other time in history. Creators led this revolution.”

While YouTube presents this as a groundbreaking innovation for creators, critics say it opens the floodgates to what many are calling a coming wave of “AI slop”—content so disconnected from real human storytelling that the lines between authenticity and fabrication will become even more blurred.

But Mohan struck an optimistic tone during his speech, per the Hollywood Reporter.

“Communities will continue to surprise us with the power of their collective fandom. And cutting-edge AI technology will push the limits of human creativity,” he said. “My biggest bet is that YouTube will continue to be the stage where it all happens.”

“YouTube has always been the home for creative experimentation,” he added. “Now, we’re giving more people the tools to create content at the speed of imagination.”

However, outside the Cannes auditorium, the sentiment is not as utopian. Many believe that far from empowering creators, tools like these could dilute the creative ecosystem by flooding it with synthetic, low-quality, and indistinguishable content—most of it likely designed to chase views, game algorithms, or mimic trending formats without any human nuance.

The unveiling comes amid ongoing industry tension over the role of AI in media. YouTube has already inked a deal with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), allowing certain high-profile artists and athletes to control how their likeness is used by AI. This move comes as a partial response to growing concern across Hollywood that generative AI tools could be used to digitally clone actors and performers without consent.

This concern came to a head during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, where one of the key demands was the regulation of AI in content creation, particularly regarding digital likeness rights and compensation. Though those strikes concluded with concessions on AI clauses, they did not stop the momentum of generative tools being rolled out in commercial platforms like YouTube, Meta, and TikTok.

YouTube’s AI tool announcement also follows broader Google efforts to push generative AI across its services. Veo 3 is the successor to Google’s earlier video generation models like Phenaki and Imagen Video and is part of a suite of new generative tools launched under Google DeepMind and Google Labs, which also include music generation, text-to-image synthesis, and large multimodal models.

For creators who depend on YouTube for income and audience engagement, the tool could be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it lowers the barrier to entry. On the other, it threatens to saturate the platform with auto-generated content that could make discovery harder and widen the gap between top-earning creators and new entrants.

YouTube’s new AI Shorts tool isn’t live yet, but the company confirmed it is currently being tested internally and will be offered to select creators before a wider rollout later this year. It will likely be integrated into YouTube Studio and the Shorts creation suite on mobile.

Many consider this not just a new feature but a signal—a sign that the platform once built by people with cameras and stories is evolving into something harder to define, harder to trust, and possibly, harder to care about.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, now under an all-Republican leadership, has given conditional approval to a $13.5 billion merger between advertising giants Omnicom and Interpublic Group—on the unusual condition that the newly formed company cannot direct advertisers to avoid media platforms based on political or ideological viewpoints.

The FTC’s proposed consent order, made public Monday, targets concerns that media-buying power could be weaponized to block ad spending on platforms such as Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), which lost major advertisers in 2023 after some ads appeared next to pro-Nazi and extremist content.

The merger combines the third- and fourth-largest ad-buying agencies in the U.S. and could reshape how billions of dollars in digital ad spending are allocated across media platforms.

“With one fewer major competitor in the Media Buying Services industry… the remaining competitors have fewer impediments to coordinating the placement of advertisements,” the FTC wrote in its complaint, warning against consolidated control that could stifle dissenting platforms.

A Victory for Musk, A Warning to Advertisers

The order is widely seen as a win for Elon Musk, who has claimed that advertisers engaged in an “illegal boycott” against X for ideological reasons. Musk has repeatedly targeted the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM)—a World Federation of Advertisers initiative that guided brands on “brand safety” by avoiding ads alongside harmful or politically extreme content.

GARM, which played a central role in ad content moderation, recently disbanded due to lack of resources and growing legal pressure, including a pending antitrust case filed by Musk’s X.

The FTC referenced GARM in its complaint, raising concerns that consolidating Omnicom and IPG would give them similar power to control advertising access through coordinated policies that could edge out controversial but legal content.

What’s In the FTC Order?

The proposed consent decree, spearheaded by Republican Chair Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, bars Omnicom-IPG from:

• Maintaining any internal policy that refuses to do business with advertisers based on political or ideological views.
• Steering ad dollars away from media publishers based on the publishers’ political or ideological alignment, unless explicitly requested by the client.
• Punishing platforms like X for their content unless clients independently demand such exclusions.

Advertisers will still be allowed to instruct the company to avoid certain websites or platforms for brand safety reasons. However, Omnicom cannot proactively enforce those exclusions across clients based on political content alone.

“Omnicom-IPG may choose with whom it does business and follow any lawful instruction from its customers,” Ferguson said in a statement. “No one will be forced to have their brand appear in venues they do not wish. But the firm cannot impose those values unilaterally.”

A Politicized FTC—and a Legal Gray Zone

The decision comes amid a political reshaping of the FTC under President Donald Trump. The agency, typically comprised of five members representing both parties, now operates with just three Republicans after Trump attempted to fire the remaining Democratic commissioners. Commissioner Mark Meador recused himself from the Omnicom-IPG decision, leaving Ferguson and Holyoak to approve the order.

This partisan alignment has raised concerns that the FTC’s traditionally bipartisan antitrust oversight is increasingly reflecting Republican cultural grievances—especially as the order leans into longstanding GOP complaints of “viewpoint discrimination” by Big Tech and mainstream media.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right to boycott, especially in political contexts, the FTC appears to be drawing a distinction between coordinated business decisions by dominant players and individual brand choices.

Ripple Effects on the Ad Industry

The ruling will likely ripple through the $1 trillion global advertising industry. Media buyers, brands, and publishers now face a less predictable regulatory landscape. The case may also set a precedent for future government intervention in content moderation and ad placement decisions, blurring the lines between business discretion and viewpoint discrimination.

Advertisers already wary of reputational risk must now tread carefully: while they retain the right to choose their media platforms, agencies like Omnicom cannot enforce blanket bans on platforms like X unless the advertiser explicitly instructs them to.

Bottom Line

The FTC’s greenlight of the Omnicom-IPG merger comes with a sharp caveat: ad giants must serve clients, not ideologies. As ideological debates reshape the digital economy, the future of ad placement may now rest on the fine print of agency contracts—and the ideological preferences of clients themselves.

Coinbase announced it will suspend trading for Helium Mobile (MOBILE), Render (RNDR), Ribbon Finance (RBN), and Synapse (SYN) on June 26, 2025, at 2 p.m. ET. The delisting is due to newer versions of these tokens being released, rendering the original versions non-compliant with Coinbase’s listing standards. Trading for these assets is currently in limit order mode, allowing users to place, cancel, or match orders until the suspension date. Users can still withdraw these tokens to external wallets after trading halts.

The decision led to price drops, with SYN falling up to 15%, RNDR 8%, MOBILE 12%, and RBN 14%. Coinbase has not confirmed support for the upgraded token versions. Investors should monitor updates and consider transferring assets to platforms supporting the new versions or selling before the deadline to avoid liquidity issues. The delisting of these tokens from Coinbase, effective June 26, 2025, has significant implications for investors, projects, and the broader crypto market.

The announcement triggered immediate price drops: SYN (-15%), RNDR (-8%), MOBILE (-12%), and RBN (-14%). These declines reflect reduced investor confidence and anticipated liquidity challenges. Post-delisting, trading on Coinbase will cease, potentially limiting liquidity as investors may struggle to find alternative platforms supporting these legacy tokens. This could lead to further price depreciation if holders rush to sell before the deadline.

Users retaining these tokens after June 26 can withdraw them to external wallets, but without Coinbase’s trading support, market access may be restricted, particularly for retail investors unfamiliar with decentralized exchanges (DEXs) or other platforms. The delisting stems from newer token versions being released, which the original tokens (MOBILE, RNDR, RBN, SYN) no longer meet Coinbase’s listing standards. This suggests projects are migrating to updated protocols or blockchains (e.g., RNDR’s planned shift to Solana as RENDER).

Projects must communicate clearly about token swaps or migration processes to maintain community trust. Lack of clarity could harm their reputation and adoption. Coinbase’s decision not to confirm support for the upgraded tokens introduces uncertainty, potentially forcing projects to seek listings on other exchanges, which may have less reach or credibility. Investors face a tight window (until June 26, 2025, 2 p.m. ET) to trade these tokens on Coinbase in limit order mode. They must decide whether to sell, hold, or transfer to wallets/exchanges supporting the legacy or upgraded tokens.

Risks include missing the trading deadline, leading to stranded assets, or transferring to platforms with lower security or liquidity. Investors unfamiliar with token migrations may face losses if they fail to swap for new versions. The delisting highlights the importance of staying informed about project updates, as token upgrades often require proactive action (e.g., swapping tokens via official project channels).

Coinbase’s delisting reinforces its commitment to regulatory compliance and listing standards, which may strengthen its position amid U.S. regulatory scrutiny. However, it risks alienating users who prefer access to a wider range of tokens. The move could drive trading volume to competing exchanges (e.g., Binance, Kraken, or DEXs like Uniswap) that support these tokens or their upgraded versions, fragmenting liquidity across platforms.

It underscores the challenges of token upgrades in crypto, where technical improvements can disrupt market access and user experience, particularly for retail investors. Retail Investors often less informed about token migrations, retail users on Coinbase may panic-sell or miss migration deadlines, incurring losses. They rely heavily on centralized exchanges for simplicity, and delistings complicate their experience.

Institutional Investors likely better equipped to navigate delistings, institutions may already hold tokens in private wallets or have access to alternative platforms. They may view price dips as buying opportunities for upgraded tokens on other exchanges. Teams behind MOBILE, RNDR, RBN, and SYN may feel pressured to accelerate token migration processes and secure listings for new versions elsewhere. They risk losing credibility if migrations are poorly executed or if major exchanges like Coinbase don’t support the upgrades.

Coinbase prioritizes compliance and user protection, but its conservative approach may alienate projects and users seeking broader token access. Competing exchanges could capitalize by listing both legacy and upgraded tokens, gaining market share. Delistings like this highlight the gatekeeping role of CEXs, which control token access based on their standards. This can frustrate users but reinforces trust in regulated platforms.

DEXs like Uniswap or SushiSwap may see increased activity as users seek alternatives to trade these tokens. However, DEXs require technical know-how and carry risks like high gas fees or scams, creating a barrier for less experienced users. Coinbase’s alignment with regulatory standards appeals to users and regulators in jurisdictions like the U.S., where compliance is critical. Delistings signal a maturing market prioritizing stability over speculative assets.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) enthusiasts may view Coinbase’s decision as overly cautious, preferring platforms that embrace innovation and support all token versions. This divide reflects broader tensions between centralized control and crypto’s ethos of decentralization. Monitor project announcements for token migration details. Consider selling before June 26 if uncertain about future liquidity, or transfer tokens to wallets/exchanges supporting the assets. Research platforms like Binance, Kraken, or DEXs for continued trading.

This delisting highlights the evolving nature of crypto markets, where technical upgrades, regulatory pressures, and platform policies create both challenges and opportunities. The divide between stakeholders underscores the need for clear communication and adaptability in navigating these changes.