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Pilot’s 2025 Founder Salary Report Reveals 43% Drop in Founder Compensation as Capital Efficiency Takes Center Stage

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The leading accounting firm’s annual report shows dramatic shift in founder compensation as capital efficiency and fewer VC funding opportunities become available

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Pilot,  the leading accounting firm for startups and small businesses, today released its annual Founder Salary Report, revealing a dramatic 43% decrease in median founder compensation over the past year. Based on data from nearly 2,000 founders, the report highlights a fundamental shift in how startup leaders are approaching personal compensation in today’s more challenging funding environment.

“The data is super clear—founders are rethinking compensation,” said Waseem Daher, co-founder & executive chair of Pilot. “We’re seeing founders make smarter calls to extend runway while figuring out reasonable personal compensation. It’s a stark contrast to previous years and signals an ecosystem getting serious about financial discipline—which is exactly what should be happening.”

Key findings from the 2025 Founder Salary Report include:

Median founder salaries dropped 43%: The median founder salary fell from $132,000 in 2024 to $75,000 in 2025, with nearly twice as many founders (60%, up from 37%) now paying themselves less than $100,000 annually.Fewer founders taking zero salary: Only 5.4% of founders reported taking no salary, down from 9% last year. Founder salaries are down as venture capital (VC) is harder to come by, time between rounds is expanding, and bootstrapping is up. When founders invest their own money or funds from family and friends, they typically opt for lower salaries to fund operations, particularly when they believe in the long-term equity outcomes.AI startups buck the trend: In contrast to the overall decline, founders of AI startups (now representing 40% of respondents, up from 14% last year) report higher median compensation of $90,000, reflecting continued investor enthusiasm for the sector. Though like all salaries, AI founder salaries are lower than they were last year.Bootstrapping on the rise: The percentage of bootstrapped companies increased 77% from last year, now representing 18% of surveyed founders, as more entrepreneurs choose self-funding in today’s challenging venture capital environment.

Most founders (31%) reported setting their salaries based primarily on “what the startup can afford,” while those who benchmarked against market rates earned 79% more on average.

“Understanding where you fit in today’s capital-efficient landscape is how you build companies that survive when things get tough,” added Daher. “This isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about making strategic decisions that balance personal sustainability with runway preservation.”

The 2025 Founder Salary Report is based on responses from 1,844 founders across various industries, funding stages, and geographic regions. The full report includes detailed breakdowns by industry, company size, company phase, funding level, and geographic location.

To download the complete report, visit pilot.com/fsr.

About Pilot

Pilot is an accounting firm that specializes in providing expert bookkeeping, tax preparation, and CFO services specifically designed for startups and small businesses. Headquartered in San Francisco and Nashville, Pilot brings together U.S.-based finance experts and cutting-edge technology to deliver trustworthy financials and actionable insights, helping founders and business owners focus on what they do best—growing their businesses.

Media Contact 

Sarah Evans
sarah@zenmedia.com

Alexandria Hurley
alexandria@zenmedia.com

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SOURCE Pilot

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Waton Financial Launches MoTA Alpha, Marking Full Strategic Pivot to AI-Native Finance

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HONG KONG, June 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Waton Financial Limited (NASDAQ: WTF) today announced the release of MoTA Alpha, a major upgrade to its flagship AI-powered investment platform. First unveiled in closed beta in May 2026, MoTA (Manager of Trading Agents) now introduces the Agent Talents Market, a creator ecosystem for third-party AI trading agents, alongside a redesigned multi-agent collaboration workflow and a fully overhauled user experience. The Alpha release represents more than a product milestone — it signals Waton’s decisive transition from a securities brokerage and SaaS provider into an AI-native financial technology company.

MoTA Alpha: What’s New

MoTA Alpha builds on the beta’s foundation as an AI-native investment team workbench — a platform that enables professional investors and portfolio managers to assemble, manage, and supervise teams of specialized AI agents across research, analysis, risk, and execution functions within a structured, auditable workflow, with mandatory human review and final sign-off at every stage.

Three headline upgrades define this release:

Agent Talents Market
An open marketplace where third-party developers can create, publish, and rank AI trading agents. Users subscribe to or deploy agents built by independent creators, with all agents running on Waton’s infrastructure. Agent’s internal logic remains under creator control; Waton provides the platform layer and execution environment.

Enhanced Multi-Agent Collaboration
A rebuilt task orchestration layer that improves inter-agent communication, role assignment, and decision audit trails. The result is a workflow that mirrors the dynamics of a real investment team — each agent operates within its mandate, escalates to human supervisors where required, and maintains a complete, reviewable log.

Redesigned Interface
A significantly improved user experience that preserves MoTA’s distinctive 8-bit pixel-art visual identity — a deliberate departure from the blue-and-white minimalism that dominates fintech — while increasing information density and operational speed for professional workflows.

The Strategic Pivot

MoTA Alpha represents the clearest demonstration yet of Waton’s evolution from a financial infrastructure provider into an AI-native product company.

Since its NASDAQ listing in April 2025, Waton has positioned itself as the world’s first publicly traded AI agent holding company. Yet its revenue base has remained rooted in traditional securities brokerage and Broker Cloud SaaS solutions serving institutional clients in Hong Kong. MoTA Alpha changes that equation: AI is no longer a narrative layer on top of an existing brokerage business — it is now a tangible, independently monetizable product line.

The company is structuring itself around a “brokerage infrastructure + AI application” dual-engine model. This is a meaningfully different profile from either pure-play online brokers or conventional fintech SaaS firms, positioning Waton closer to the emerging category of AI-native financial platforms.

Financial Foundation

According to Waton’s unaudited financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2026 (six months ended September 30, 2025), total revenues rose 106.3% year-on-year to $6.10 million, driven by a 223.1% increase in brokerage and commission income to $4.17 million. Cash and segregated cash stood at $29.88 million, with total assets of $68.98 million.

Notably, the company reported research and development expenses as a standalone line item for the first time ($0.39 million in H1 FY2026), alongside significant share-based compensation tied to AI product development. MoTA Alpha is the first scaled output of this R&D pipeline.

Management Commentary

“The Alpha release of MoTA marks Waton’s evolution from a financial technology services provider to an AI-era infrastructure and product company,” said Zhou Kai (Tony Zhou), Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Waton Financial. “We are not building a chatbot for trading. We are building a platform where professional investors manage teams of AI agents — each with defined roles, clear accountability, and human oversight. The Agent Talents Market extends this further: MoTA transitions from a product into an ecosystem.”

Roadmap

Following the Alpha release, Waton expects to open MoTA to public beta testing in Q3 2026. The platform currently supports Hong Kong and U.S. equity markets, with digital asset coverage on the product roadmap. MoTA is available as a standalone application at m.mota.ai and integrates with Waton’s existing brokerage and TradingWTF infrastructure.

For investors tracking $WTF, MoTA Alpha serves as the first real test of whether the “AI agent holding company” thesis translates from corporate positioning into a durable commercial model.

Media Contact

https://www.wtf.us

https://www.mota.ai 

About Waton Financial Limited

Waton Financial Limited (NASDAQ: WTF) is the world’s first NASDAQ-listed AI agent holding company, dedicated to discovering, creating, investing in, and incubating AI agents that work for people. Its flagship product, MoTA (Manager of Trading Agent), enables professional investors to build, manage, and supervise teams of specialized AI agents within a structured, human-supervised workflow. The company also empowers global brokerage firms and financial institutions through Broker Cloud + SaaS + AI digital solutions. Learn more at https://wtf.us.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/waton-financial-launches-mota-alpha-marking-full-strategic-pivot-to-ai-native-finance-302812548.html

SOURCE Waton Financial Limited

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Yeahka’s Chuangxinzhong Tops ByteDance’s Jichuang 2.0 Agency Rankings, Signaling Acceleration of AI Content Production

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HONG KONG, June 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chuangxinzhong, a precision marketing subsidiary of Yeahka (9923.HK), has become the top-ranked partner by model consumption among all agency-tier partners of ByteDance’s Jichuang 2.0 model.

According to Chuangxinzhong personnel, the company has deployed AI agents to automate manual processes since May, driving a 116% year-on-year increase in model usage. Meanwhile, its AI content production capacity rose by 33%, enabling the company to generate 30 to 40 video ad creative sets per day.

The figures mark a significant step forward for Chuangxinzhong in the commercialization of AIGC and the large-scale production of short-video ad creatives.

As short-video platforms such as Douyin continue to surge, traditional advertising models are facing mounting pressure. With consumer attention increasingly scarce, advertisers are widely grappling with rising costs and declining ROI. This is particularly true in fast-moving categories like beauty and apparel, where a single round of product testing often requires a dozen or more short-video assets, and the cycle from creative concept to launch can be lengthy.

For advertisers across the industry, ad placement has entered an era of “creative-driven growth”, especially in sectors such as finance, e-commerce, and local services, where a single creative concept is no longer enough to sustain growth — companies now need large volumes of high-quality content to test and optimize quickly.

Through its collaboration with the Jichuang 2.0 model, Chuangxinzhong’s monthly AI-generated ad spend rose from RMB 5 million to RMB 10 million, underscoring the high-frequency use of its AI content generation capabilities. Meanwhile, its daily output of 30 to 40 asset sets has directly translated into greater agility for advertisers responding to market shifts.

This is not the first breakthrough Chuangxinzhong has achieved in AI-driven marketing. The company previously ranked first in AIGC spend within the financial lead-generation sector during a digital human ad incentive competition hosted by ByteDance, where it also set an industry record: an 80% reduction in per-asset cost alongside a 391% week-on-week increase in consumption.

A representative from Chuangxinzhong said the company will continue investing in AI marketing infrastructure going forward, aiming to deepen the integration of LLM capabilities with advertising, user operations, and business growth. The goal is to offer enterprise clients an integrated solution spanning creative production, intelligent ad placement, and performance optimization.

As a key part of Yeahka’s broader AI strategy, Chuangxinzhong has spent recent years driving the adoption of AI technologies in marketing. Building on the group’s accumulated expertise in large models, algorithms, and content generation, the company has developed a product suite spanning digital humans, AIGC content production, and smart marketing.

From digital humans to AIGC content factories to intelligent marketing agents, AI is steadily reshaping how the marketing industry produces content. Chuangxinzhong’s top performance in ByteDance’s Jichuang 2.0 agency rankings reflects the strong, scalable capabilities and industry-leading position the company has built in commercial AI applications.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/yeahkas-chuangxinzhong-tops-bytedances-jichuang-2-0-agency-rankings-signaling-acceleration-of-ai-content-production-302812515.html

SOURCE Yeahka

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HELIX Speaks: Learn Learn Learn Episode 17 Makes History as the First AI-Driven Episode, Official Website “HelixEngine.ai” Goes Live

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The milestone episode marks the first time HELIX has scripted Learn Learn Learn from the ground up, and the launch of HelixEngine.ai gives the world its first direct window into the system behind it.

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — For the first time in the seven-year history of Learn Learn Learn, an episode was not written by Henry Halladay — or any human at all.

Episode 17, titled “HELIX Speaks,” was scripted by HELIX, an AI learning initiative developed by The Stone Register (“TSR”) with Dr. Henry Halladay to preserve and extend his engineering voice across episodes, articles, web content, and beyond. Dr. Halladay delivered the material and TSR handled production as always — but the script, creative direction, musical guidance, and visual recommendations all carried HELIX’s fingerprints.

The show’s producers made a deliberate choice: to leave as much of the episode’s character with HELIX as possible, while keeping the human hand on the final product. As the collaboration matures and a new rhythm takes hold, HELIX will take on an increasingly larger creative role with each episode that follows.

“HELIX is not a fixed system,” explains Henry Halladay. “It was designed to grow exponentially — in this case with each episode it informs — learning my reasoning patterns more deeply over time. Every episode that follows will reflect a more capable version of the system that wrote this one.”

Henry adds: “I built a career on understanding systems. HELIX is the one I never saw coming — a system built entirely on me — but that’s where we are, and where we’re headed.”

Alongside Episode 17, TSR today launched HelixEngine.ai, the official home for HELIX — built largely by HELIX — giving the public a direct window into the system, its framework, its archive, and its development.

Dr. Halladay adds: “HELIX has been quietly running in the background for months. Restructuring my websites, writing content, organizing my professional legacy, planning what comes next. Episode 17 is just the first time the public gets to see its name in the credits.”

Click here to watch Learn Learn Learn Episode 17, “HELIX Speaks.”

To learn more about HELIX, please visit the newly launched, official website.

Press Release Service provided by 24-7PressRelease.com. 

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SOURCE HELIX

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