Google bets on Gemini for 2025

Top News

• Bench off the bench? After a dramatic, shocking collapse last week, Bench has found a buyer. Employer.com is now the owner of Bench, adding accounting services to the payroll and onboarding service provider. Presumably, Employer got a deal, but how many Bench customers will stick around is not yet clear, so it’s hard to grade the transaction at this juncture. For Bench customers who just wanted to be let back into their accounts to secure their data, the news is a win.

• Google doubles down on Gemini: Google CEO Sundar Pichai is not hitting the brakes on his company’s AI efforts. In a call that CNBC obtained a recording of, Pichai told Google workers that “scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be [the company’s] biggest focus next year.” That means we should expect Gemini to take on more tasks for Google’s myriad users across software, search, and mobile in 2025. OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and other makers of Gemini competitors have similar goals, setting up next year as yet another annum of scrapping AI models. For those of us who consume the technology, that’s great news.

• Trump wants to throw TikTok a lifeline: The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear TikTok’s petition that a law forcing it to divest from its parent company or be banned by the United States in rapid fashion so that it can come to a verdict before the upcoming enforcement date. Now, incoming President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to pause the law so that he can work out a compromise. Whether the court will prove willing to cede its authority to the Executive Branch on the matter could shed light on how much room it intends to grant Trump during his second administration.

TWiST500

SEO. Love it or hate it, tuning websites and other pieces of online content to be discoverable by search engines is mandatory for businesses and an industry in its own right.

But if the world of search stops being about generating lists of links and instead mutates into answers, what are brands to do? How can they still reach the masses? A startup called Profound thinks it has the solution. SEO, but for the AI era.

Calling its work “AI search optimization,” Profound bets that AI-powered search is here to stay, will gain market share over time, and thus create a new software niche. My understanding of the thesis indicates that the same folks who invest in SEO today will spend money on showing up in the future’s search results, too. That means that Profound could be helping build a huge market in short order.

Profound is a very young company with just $3.5 million worth of known, raised capital. But TollBit was also pretty small when we added it to our list, and since then, it’s raised another larger round. So, I feel confident adding it to our list for similar reasons: Here’s a new market space that AI is opening, and startups are looking to fill.

I’m curious how AI model companies that underpin the search engines in question respond to Profound and the other companies that will get built to tackle the same issue. After all, it’s not like Google and the SEO community always get along. But so long as companies want to reach potential customers, showing up in search results will remain a game that every brand you know wants to play. — Alex

p.s. Our own Rajsitee Dhavale pitched Profound for TWiST500 inclusion. Hats off to her for her hard work!

A message from Vanta

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This Week in Startups

E2065: Before kicking off the holiday season, Jason and Alex dive into discussion about approaches to population growth, Palantir's valuation and role in defense tech, and market trends like meme stocks. They dive into topics such as Michael Saylor's Bitcoin strategy, US geopolitical strategies, and government hires in emerging tech and AI policy advisory. The episode wraps with discussions on modernizing securities laws and Emil Michael's appointment in research and engineering.

E2064: Jason and Alex introduce the episode with Varun Mohan of Codium, exploring AI's role in IDE development, challenges in building 10x better experiences, and the future of no-code tools. They discuss AI's impact on developer jobs, salaries, and remote work, featuring insights from Satya Nadella on SaaS and AI agents. The episode wraps up with hiring strategies, hyper-competition in AI, VC expectations, and audience Q&A.

E2063: Jason and Alex kick off with insights on Databrick’s recent fundraising, venture capital trends, and TikTok's ongoing legal challenges. Next, Shishir Mehrotra joins to discuss the recent Coda-Grammarly merger, sharing insights on AI-driven productivity, SaaS dynamics, and the future of AI agents in the workplace. The episode wraps with lessons from tech M&A and AI's growing role in shaping customer interactions and business efficiency.

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LAUNCH Cloud Kitchens Incubator

Applications are open for Cohort 2 of the LAUNCH CloudKitchens Incubator (LiCK). We're looking for food entrepreneurs who wish to expand into the ghost kitchen space or tech founders with a team and a great idea. The application and more information can be found at https://ck.launch.co/.

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