SaaSpocalypse Now

Top News

• So is software dead or nah?: Following the much-hyped arrival of Claude Code, Cowork, and of course our new pal Clawdbot/OpenClaw — and a string of dispiriting earnings reports — retail investors have turned on SaaS and software stocks. The Nasdaq 100 experienced its worst two-day loss since October this week, losing $550 billion plus in market value, while the IGV Software Index is down 30% from its September peak. So are software giants like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Adobe definitely doomed for sure? Perhaps not…. A number of commentators are pointing to signs of hope. Steven Sinofsky posits that AI agents will trigger the development of MORE software, not less, and will most likely reorient the industry rather than fully disrupt it. SaaStr argues that AI tools are not taking the place of the SaaS tools at major enterprises, but are making a dent in the budgets which previously went to those SaaS tools. So perhaps a wait and see approach at this point is wise.

• Vibes may get its own app: Meta is reportedly testing a standalone app for its AI-generated video product, Vibes. (Currently, Vibes lives within Meta’s AI app.) So far, it sounds very similar to OpenAI’s Sora: an interface for creating and posting your own videos, along with a dedicated feed of content from friends and contacts. As with Sora, there’s also an option for remixing other users’ videos with your own tweaks and prompts. The standalone product will reportedly rely on a “freemium” model, with extra features available for a monthly subscription fee.

• Fundamental emerges from stealth: The newly-unveiled lab is working on a new way for large enterprises to analyze and leverage their massive stores of structure data alongside cutting-edge AI tools. They’re building Nexus, what’s known as an Large Tabular Model (LTM), which has a number of key differences from a conventional Large Language Model (LLM), even down to the architecture level. For one, LTMs are deterministic, not probabilistic, which means they give an identical answer every time they’re asked a question. But perhaps most notably, Nexus is trained specifically to handle the kinds of very large datasets — say, spreadsheets with billions of rows — that prove a struggle for their LLM counterparts. Fundamental this week emerged from stealth with $255 million in funding, at a $1.2 billion valuation, to pursue this very opportunity.

TWiST 500

Anthropic’s Claude is absolutely everywhere this week. Their Cowork product is being blamed (rightly or not) for the collapse of SaaS and software stocks. Their models power the open source OpenClaw project, that has become an obsession for developers and founders worldwide. They’ve even got a series of ads airing during this weekend’s Super Bowl LX, promoting ad-free Claude (and contrasting this pledge with an unnamed but obvious rival).

But perhaps the BIGGEST Anthropic story of the week is Claude Opus 4.6, the latest incarnation of the powerful model that powers Claude Code and Cowork. According to the team at Anthropic, Opus 4.6 is a reasoning model that’s fine-tuned to solve large-scale or complex challenges, while tackling simpler queries more quickly. (They recommend turning down the “effort” setting from high, to avoid using excess compute on more straight-forward tasks.) Bloomberg points out that this will be particularly vital for financial research and services, as Claude can now comb through vast stores of data, to produce results that would take even an experienced human analyst days or even weeks.

Opus 4.6 also boasts what Anthropic calls “agent teams,” coordinated groups of AI agents that break apart large jobs into bite-sized chunks that can be tackled in pieces. In part, that means stronger integrations with third-party apps and services like PowerPoint. While Opus 4.5 could create a PowerPoint deck, it’s work would then be transferred into PowerPoint for further edits. Opus 4.6 can continue tweaking and editing the model on its own. Claude can achieve this feat thanks to an expanded context window, allowing the model to recall more information per session. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2245: HQ Trivia legend Scott Rogowsky joins the show to tell Jason and Alex about his new livestreamed in-app game show, Savvy. (Think of it like Wordle meets HQ Trivia meets “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”) Join us for a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the rise and fall of the once-viral trivia game, and a sneak peek at Scott’s new project. PLUS Alex chats with Dr. Trevor Bennett of Starfish Space about the Otter Spacecraft and why orbital paths around Earth need so much clean-up.

E2244: In our final TWiST Tokyo update, Jason welcomes The League founder Amanda Bradford and Uber veteran Will Barnes to discuss the TOP priorities for early stage founders. These are the areas where they can’t afford to lose focus for even a week. Find out why it’s so important to keep a close eye on your expenses, why trust and reliability are so crucial, even for an MVP, why distribution should always be top of mind, and more vital lessons from the trenches.

E2243: SpaceX and xAI are MERGING into what will be the world’s most valuable private company (at least until a planned IPO later this year). Get Jason’s thoughts on why this makes sense, and how Elon Musk will turn humanity into a Kardashev II-level civilization, on TWiST. PLUS, we’re running down all of the LAUNCH Team’s favorite OpenClaw Skills that have exponentially increased our productivity.

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