SailPoint’s IPO could set the tone for 2025

Top News

• Ecommerce hits turbulence: As the market sorts out new American tariffs on China and the functional end of de minimis shipments from China, the United States Postal Service said that it would end parcel delivery from China and Hong Kong. Then, it rapidly went back on that decision. The situation is highly fluid and somewhat confusing. Immediate impacts are expected to ding low-cost Chinese ecommerce providers; other companies that depend on Chinese manufacturing and sales in the United States have much to sort out.

• New Google AI models: The Gemini family of AI models from Google was updated today. Gemini 2.0 Flash is now available for commercial use, a new ‘Pro’ version of Gemini was shipped as an experimental model, and Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite, a new model that Google calls its “most cost-efficient model yet,” was also released. The updates come in the wake of new models and tools from OpenAI and, of course, DeepSeek’s famous work. For startups, there’s never been a better, faster, and cheaper set of LLMs to work with.

• Sailpoint’s IPO nears: Okta competitor SailPoint’s return to the public markets is set to raise $1.0 billion at a valuation of around $11.5 billion. The company is now expected to list next week and could provide a very important heat check for public market debuts in the first half of 2025. Should SailPoint do well when it lists (again), its success could help other companies find the gumption to pull the trigger on their own IPO as well. If it struggles, the IPO market could remain calcified for a little while longer.

TWiST500

There are a number of deep-tech startups on the TWiST500. Alice & Bob, a quantum computing company from France, for example. A number of our space-focused members are also working on problems so complex that they might fail; once you get into complex frontier hardware, you take on an entirely different set of challenges than, say, when building enterprise SaaS.

From one perspective, that’s a negative. After all, who wants more challenges along an already difficult path? On the other, doing incredibly hard things is a great way to avoid copy-cat competition. How long has SpaceX had a lock on commercial space launch? You get the idea.

Enter the race for fusion power. There are several fusion startups on the TWiST500 because venture investors think that their potential is real and close enough to match venture returns timelines. One of the group is Helion Energy, which is a good example thanks to its recent $425 million funding round. We’re having them around for a chat later next week.

Why Helion? Well-known backers don’t hurt, nor does its deal to sell (future) power to Microsoft. But what is most exciting about Helion is that after six prototypes, the company expects its seventh to “be the first machine to demonstrate electricity from fusion.” After which point the company intends to build the world’s first fusion power plant.

Bold? Yes. Ambitious? Certainly. Over its skis? Perhaps, but who wants to track startups that are not aiming high? Here’s to the great, towering datacenters of the future being powered by clean, infinite energy. — Alex

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