Google could buy Wiz for $23B, OneStream’s IPO, and adding SmartHR to the TWiST500

Top News

• Google in talks to buy Wiz for $23B: Search giant Google is in “advanced talks” to buy Wiz, an Israeli-American cybersecurity startup that has raised around $1.9 billion thus far. The company previously announced that it crossed the $350 million ARR milestone, meaning that Google could pay a steep price in revenue-multiple terms for the startup. If Google does buy Wiz, Sequoia, Insight, Index, Greenoaks, Salesforce Ventures, Greylock, and Andreessen Horowitz could all do well.

• OneStream IPO sets terms: After selling a majority stake to PE group KKR back in 2019, the corporate financial software company could be worth as much as $4.4 billion in its debut, provided that its current IPO price range of $17 to $19 per share holds up. The company’s in good shape — highly recurring revenues, improving cash generation, and good growth — meaning that despite its PE backing it could still provide an interesting and useful market heat check for other tech shops considering a public offering.

• Smartphone sales rebound: Global smartphone sales surged in the second quarter, rising 6.5% from 268 million units shipped to 285.4 million. Apple and Samsung lost share while Xiaomi and Vivo gained share. Why do we care? Jason and Alex have discussed rising smartphone penetration in markets like India (more here), making them prime startup and venture capital targets in recent weeks.

TWiST500

After adding a host of companies to the TWiST500 last week, we’re back with one addition today and two news items from one of the best-known companies on the list.

• First, SmartHR. A few weeks back, we noted SmartHR's $140 million Series E in the newsletter but ran out of time to discuss its addition to the list on the podcast. SmartHR recently reached $100 million ARR, making it both a unicorn and an IPO target. As such, it goes on the list with other HRtech unicorns, including Gusto, Deel, and Rippling.

And in the news category, OpenAI has been making yet more headlines, including news that its previously rumored “Q*” project is now called “Strawberry.” What does it do? Advanced reasoning, Reuters reports, so that OpenAI’s AI tech can “plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform” more complicated research.

OpenAI, of course, competes with other TWiST500 companies like Anthropic.

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This Week in Startups

E1979: In this news roundtable, Jason and Alex dug into StubHub’s IPO, how cooling inflation could lead to rate cuts — a potential boon for venture capital results — and OpenAI’s five levels of AI. The Microsoft-aligned company thinks that it is still pretty early in its progress in building artificial intelligence software. To close, the pair added a host of new companies to the TWiST500.

E1978: Jason sat down with Anand Nandakumar, the CEO of Halo Car to chat about the startup’s approach to driving autonomy. While many major tech companies are pursuing self-driving cars, Halo Car is more focused on teleoperation to get rental vehicles to customers. As self-driving remains a future product instead of — mostly — a present reality, it’s a timely conversation and a neat startup to boot.

E1977: Jason and Alex kicked off the week digging into the news that a16z has built a GPU cluster that it then rents to portfolio companies. How far will VCs go to secure deal flow? That far, it turns out. The pair also dug into Q2 venture capital trends and added a host of robotics companies to the TWiST500.

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