Google flexes its search market share, Klarna digs into banking, and AI growth at Alibaba

Top News

• Google’s market power bites: Bloomberg reporting indicates that online publishers have to choose between being crawled by Google for both search inclusion and the use of their data for AI-generated search answers—or neither. This means that publishers might not want to be summarized but cannot afford to delete themselves from Google’s index. A U.S. judge recently deemed Google to have a monopoly in search; this news doesn’t help make Mountain View’s case.

• Klarna the neobank: European startup Klarna is best known for its buy now, pay later (BNPL) service. But it’s increasingly building out neobank-like services so that its customer base can do more with their money inside of their current accounts. Neobanking has proven lucrative in the current environment of elevated interest rates. Perhaps Klarna would like to have new revenue streams to tout ahead of its eventual IPO.

• Alibaba’s cloud growth has an AI silver lining: Shares of Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant Alibaba are off about 14% in the last year. Partially to blame for its sideways trading is slow growth. In the second quarter, for example, Alibaba grew just 4%. Happily for Alibaba, its cloud business grew 6% in Q2, a modestly brisker pace. But inside that 6% was triple-digit growth from “AI-related product revenue.” Put another way, Alibaba is seeing AI-related cloud spend grow, just not enough to solve its larger growth issues.

On the record with the TWiST500

I’m gearing up to interview yet another TWiST500 company today — this particular interview won’t be out for a few weeks — and the prep process made me realize that we’ve had a number of TWiST500 companies on the show thus far:

• Gusto: My chat with Gusto CEO Josh Reeves is here (also on YouTube). We dug into selling to SMBs, corporate culture, and how to hold true to a founding vision over the long haul.

• Huntress: All about cybersecurity from the SMB perspective, echoing our conversation with Gusto. This chat was a treat, thanks to the candor of CEO Kyle Hanslovan. Podcast link here, and YouTube version here.

• Cyera: Data security might not get you out of bed in the morning, but given the steady barrage of leaks, hacks, and compromises, we’re going to have more cybersecurity companies on the TWiST500. Check out our Cyera episode here, or on YouTube here.

• TollBit: Who will help the little guy get an AI data licensing check? TollBit wants to do it. So, we had the team swing by to explain their progress to date and how their model works. Chat here, YouTube here.

And more to come. I’m reaching out to another tranche of inductees to get them onto the show. Let me know if there’s a TWiST500 member that you particularly want to learn more from. I’ll try to get them on the pod! — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E1992: Jason and Alex were back for another news roundtable, digging into the recent Trump-X conversation, WeRide’s upcoming self-driving IPO (Alex notes here), Polymarket and Perplexity teaming up, and European venture capital.

E1991: Jason sat down with founders from four different Founder University companies, listening and responding to their pitches live. Pablo Fernandez of Big Rentals, Brittany Peregoff of Where2Wheel, Ardalan Mirshani of MyLens, and Mariano Apodaca of Prosperous AI shared what they were building and detailed their current traction. If you love startups, this is a must-watch episode.

E1990: This episode throws it back to our LIQUIDITY Summit! Featuring Antonio Gracias of Valor and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management.

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