Fintech roars back

Top News

• Thinking Machines Lab vs. Safe Superintelligence vs. OpenAI? We now know the name of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new startup. Called 'Thinking Machines Lab,’ the startup doesn’t appear to be a pure foundation model play — though ‘model intelligence’ will prove a ‘cornerstone’ of its work, it writes — but instead will focus more on “mak[ing] AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable.” Elsewhere in ex-OpenAI-land, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence is said to be closing in on a $1 billion raise.

• AI funding rounds galore: Today’s show didn’t have time to cover the segment, but a number of large, vertical-ish AI rounds have been announced lately, underscoring that building tailored AI apps is proving to be big business. Luminance Technologies — AI for the legal field — just raised $75 million, while Hightouch — AI for marketing and customer experience — raised $80 million. Expect to see more of this in the coming months.

• Fintech is back: Financial technology startups were once the apple of venture’s eye. Then they spent a few years in the wilderness. Now, with major deals like Tabby’s $160 million round, Zeta’s $50 million, and the fact that Mercury is “reportedly in talks to raise capital in a new round led by Sequoia at an over $3 billion valuation,” TechCrunch reporter Mary Ann Azevedo is starting to get “2021 flashbacks.” She’s joking a little but isn’t off the mark. Fintech certainly seems able to once again raise big rounds at valuations in the billions. Good news for fintech founders, certainly.

TWiST500

It’s new TWiST500 addition day! Amongst the new members that we’re plugging into the list, I want to highlight a few in particular:

• Crunchbase: Conflict corner here for myself, but the company’s fresh AI work is pretty notable. Crunchbase has long been a key repository of private-market information. One thing we’ve learned recently is that proprietary data in the age of AI is pretty powerful stuff. So when Crunchbase, a Series D startup, announced that it was rejiggering its product to take advantage of modern AI tools, we took note. More to come here, and look for an interview with the company’s CEO in the not-too-distant future.

• SFCompute: We have a number of neo-clouds on the TWiST500, including names like Coreweave. SFCompute is interesting twice. First, for its super-flexible offerings — if you purchase more compute time than you need, “just sell back what you don't need” the startup writes — and because it’s clearly seeing lots of juicy demand. The company announced on Twitter that it is stacking another 2,000 H100 Nvidia chips to its “on-demand market.” Killer.

• /dev/agents: There’s an interesting push in AI today to get computers to self-use existing, human-focused digital interfaces. It’s a pretty reasonable bet, as lots of software today is built for humans to use, and thus features human-friendly UIs. But in an agentic future, won’t we need an entirely new set of UI elements and rules? That’s what /dev/agents is building, what it calls an operating system for agents. This is one of the more speculative additions to the TWiST500 in terms of knowing little about its future products and revenues, but as it bullseyes a thesis of ours, it’s going on the list! - Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2085: IPO shakeups, big AI moves, and essential founder hacks—this episode covers it all. Jason breaks down Robinhood’s 6X stock surge and his strategy for $HOOD, plus the latest on tech IPOs as Turo pulls out and SailPoint surges. We dive into AI’s open-source battle, with X.ai chasing a $10B raise and DeepSeek challenging Hugging Face. And for founders, Jason shares the startup golden rule you should break for success—plus, a brand-new startup idea he’s willing to fund right now.

E2084: Jason and Alex interview Sam Lessin from Slow Ventures to discuss the creator economy and their $60M creator fun. They also have a great interview with David Kirtley, the CEO and Co-founder of Helion Energy, about their fusion reactors and the future of energy generation. And Lon Harris hops in to discuss copyright infringement and how it will affect LLMs. Great episode!

E2083: Former newsreader Lon makes a prodigal son-esque return to the show this week to chat with Jason and Alex about all the tech ads that aired during Super Bowl LIX, and they pick some of their favorite (and least favorite) spots. Then Jason and Alex cover France’s investment strategy when it comes to AI innovation, and AI’s likely impact on employment in the IT sphere, plus they look ahead to some key upcoming earnings reports. All that and the latest on the Founder Fridays competition.

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The TWiST500 newsletter is the new, updated, and improved TWiST Ticker.