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Top News

• Alphabet buys Intersect: Google’s parent company will spend $4.75 billion buying Intersect, a company that pairs data centers with on-site power generation in a deal that could accelerate the cloud giant’s compute buildout. Reports that Google is sufficiently compute-constrained to require an internal council dividing up available chips and racks amongst internal customers likely underpins the deal. If you need more compute, buying a company that will help you achieve that goal makes good sense. Google had previously partnered with Intersect in a multi-party deal announced in late 2024.

• Coinbase buys The Clearing Company: After announcing a move to bring Kalshi-powered prediction markets to its users, American crypto giant Coinbase has snapped up The Clearing Company, a startup that had raised just $15 million in a round earlier this year, led by USV. The Clearing Company was building the plumbing for prediction markets, and Coinbase wants to run its own prediction market. So call this a match made in heaven. As Jason noted during the show today, Coinbase has been on an acquisition spree in recent quarters. Perhaps we’ll see more deals from the former startup in 2026.

• Erebor raises $350M: Palmer Luckey’s neo-bank Erebor has raised a fresh round worth $350 million at a $4.35 billion valuation, Axios reports. Why is the former Oculus founder and current head of Anduril joining the banking sector? Building a bank that is crypto-friendly, according to reports. Debanking during the Biden years, along with the SVB crisis, are both potential catalysts for technology discontent with existing banking options. Perhaps that why Lux Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, and other investors are backing Erebor.

TWiST 500

The rapidly approaching holiday period and year-end are not stopping the news cycle, nor are they able to slow the pace at which new AI models are released. Today, Z.ai, a Chinese AI lab and TWiST500 member, announced a new model in its GLM family: GLM-4.7.

The new model, released under an open license, brings upgrades to GLM-4.6’s coding abilities and tool use, helping it set improved benchmark scores.

Why do we care about an incremental, if impressive, upgrade to a single AI model from Z.ai? Because the company is working on going public! Yes, Z.ai is prepping an IPO that could raise as much as $300 million when it lists.

Surprised that the company is not raising more in its upcoming listing? Why is Z.ai not raising more than, say, the average oversized American Series B? Probably because its revenues are modest. In 2024 the company’s revenues totaled a mere $44.4 million. Even if it grew fourfold this year, Z.ai remains about the same size as ElevenLabs, putting it in echelons below the revenue figures posted by OpenAI and Anthropic.

But that’s half the fun. Here in the United States, leading AI labs remain private and raise tens of billions. Meanwhile over in China, it appears that we’re set to see several AI lab IPOs (MiniMax is also prepping its own public offering) in the wake of a handful of GPU IPOs. Yes, Chinese chip and model companies powering a domestic AI boom are going public at a torrid pace.

Perhaps the world-leading pocket-depth of the American capital markets allows for companies to stay private longer. Still, it’s going to be exciting as heck to see the latest data from Z.ai and MiniMax when they list. And we’ll be able to see if GLM-4.7 provides a material boost to the former’s growth rate. Onward! — Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2226: We’ve got Hampton co-founder and “My First Million” co-host Sam Parr joining the show for a full hour, to walk us through his best tips and tricks on copywriting and online marketing. Join us for a can’t-miss deep dive through the best-ever marketing books, why there’s no such thing as “too long,” only “too uninteresting,” why the best advertising tricks from the ‘40s and ‘50s are still effective, and much more!

E2225: On the debut of our new spinoff — “This Week in AI” — Jason hangs with three all-star founders: Mikey Schulman of Suno, Ali Ansari of Micro1, and Wade Foster from Zapier. Together they chat about the AI talent wars of 2025 (and soon to be 2026), the value of a “high-agency” mindset, how to work around the design bottleneck, entering the Post Training Era, and much more!

E2224: Roomba… we hardly knew ya! The company behind the iconic disc-shaped autonomous vacuum, iRobot, had a chance to get acquired by Amazon back in 2022, but European and US regulators stalled the deal. NOW iRobot is entering bankruptcy. Per Jason, allowing this deal to go through would have benefitted everybody, but because of over-cautious antitrust action, the world lost out on a once-great company.

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