Today's SaaS Pulse
OpenAI acquires Ona to embed secure workspaces for autonomous AI agents
OpenAI announced the acquisition of Ona, a 79‑person cloud development environment provider, to embed secure, persistent workspaces for autonomous AI agents. Ona’s platform has seen a 13‑fold rise in weekly agent sessions across banks, pharma firms, and sovereign wealth funds. Analysts estimate the deal value between $450 million and $500 million.
Also developing:
By the numbers: NinjaOne raises $400M Series C extension
Ecommerce Success with Fractional Talent
The Starters, launched in late 2023, is a two‑sided marketplace that connects ecommerce brands with vetted fractional talent, now hosting over 600 freelancers and serving 500 client brands. The platform differentiates itself by charging freelancers zero commission and requiring brands to pay a $295 monthly subscription, resulting in a median freelancer rate of $90 per hour. Bootstrapped with a $5,000 personal investment, the business focuses on high‑quality, strategic expertise rather than price competition. Looking ahead, The Starters plans to evolve into a broader knowledge hub offering courses, webinars, and advisory services for ecommerce growth.
Skip Early Coding, Prioritize Customer Interviews for Success
Patrick Thompson sold his startup to Amplitude for tens of millions of dollars just one year after launching it. But the most impressive part of the story isn't the exit. It is that for the first six months of the...
Google Cloud: A Deep Dive Into GKE Sandbox for Agents
Google Cloud introduced GKE Sandbox for Agents, a Kubernetes‑native extension that runs untrusted or specialized workloads in lightweight, VM‑like sandboxes powered by gVisor. The solution adds a new Sandbox custom resource definition (CRD) and controller, offering stable identities, persistent storage,...
Attackers Target Remote Work and Data Storage
New research from ISP Beaming reveals UK firms endured over 791,600 cyber‑attacks in 2025, with attackers homing in on remote‑work infrastructure and data‑storage systems. Automated probing of remote desktop and VPN services became a constant, feeding ransomware groups that encrypt...
Modernize Your Business Communication for Less with Quo’s All-in-One Phone System
Quo introduces a cloud‑based all‑in‑one phone system aimed at startups and small businesses, offering a 7‑day free trial and a 20% discount on the first three months. The platform unifies calls, texts, and team collaboration without requiring additional hardware, and...
The Change You Need Is the Change You Make. SaaStr AI Annual 2026 Will Help You Get There.
SaaStr AI Annual 2026 positions itself as the definitive gathering for B2B SaaS leaders confronting the AI wave. The conference promises operator‑led sessions that deliver concrete frameworks for pricing, GTM, and product development, rather than abstract theory. Attendees will join...
Build Calm Businesses: Prioritize Health Over Hustle
My first years of building SaaS were hard. I was pushing features, updates, YouTube videos and ads at a high pace - and it showed. I don't anymore... Instead, I made room for: → Daily workout → Eating healthy →...
MCSP Buyer’s Guide: 6 Top Managed Cloud Services Providers — and How to Choose
Managed cloud services providers (MCSPs) handle migration, monitoring, security, and cost‑control for public, private and hybrid clouds, letting organizations offload day‑to‑day operations. Selecting an MCSP is fraught with trust issues, as service‑level agreements are hard to verify until incidents occur,...
Bank of England's Oracle Cloud Migration Bill Triples as Project Grinds On
The Bank of England has tripled its spend on Oracle systems integrator Version 1, raising the contract to £21.5 million from an original £7 million tender. The increase reflects a shift from a two‑phase to a multi‑phase Oracle Cloud migration covering finance, procurement,...
Press Spike Amplifies SEO, AI Mentions, and Sales
What happens when you get a big spike in press coverage? Changes to your Google SERP? Yup. Changes to how AIs talk about you? Yup. Changes to sales? Yup, that too. 😎 This past Sunday, Geraldine and I joined Caitlin...
Microsoft Is Making It Faster and Easier to Add Hyperlinks to Word
Microsoft announced a new shortcut that lets users add hyperlinks in Word by simply pasting a copied URL onto selected text, eliminating the traditional right‑click menu. The feature is available across Word for Windows, macOS, and the web, requiring version...
202. Kate Sygrove, Director of CS & Support, Mouseflow - Speak CFO: How CS Leaders Earn an Equal Seat at...
In this episode, Kate Sygrove, Director of Customer Success at Mouseflow, outlines how CS leaders can earn a seat at the executive table by "speaking the language of the CFO," translating customer sentiment into predictive revenue models and combining hard...
How KPMG Is Redefining the Future of SAP Consulting on a Global Scale
KPMG has integrated SAP's conversational AI, Joule for Consultants, across 29 member firms, giving thousands of consultants real‑time access to SAP best practices. The tool streamlines documentation‑heavy SAP projects, accelerating design workshops and reducing reliance on manual knowledge retrieval. By...
Practical AI Tactics for Scaling Revenue and Reducing Churn
No fluff. No panels about "the future of AI." At SaaStr AI Annual 2026 (May 12-14) you'll learn: 💲How to price AI features 🤖How to reduce churn with AI agents 💰How to build AI GTM agents that work 🧖♀️How to hire (or not...
Migrating 5 Billion Objects: On‑Prem Success Story
Jeremy pulled off an incredible feat migrating five billion objects off S3 and onto our own on-prem petabyte storage setup. He shares the story on our new technically-minded Recordables podcast. https://t.co/O8AtDQKiwu
Trajectory
The post argues that the software era has moved from merely adopting tools to mastering the specific paths—called trajectories—through which those tools are used. By tracking how users interact with CRM, IDEs, or AI assistants, companies can automate processes, refine...
Seat‑Based SaaS Remains King as AI Becomes Feature
Is it OK to call yourself a SaaS Founder again in 2026? We're only a few days into 2026 but something has shifted. A few macro trends is showing telltale signs that AI is a Feature and not a business....
Revenue Intelligence Powered by Real Sales Conversations
Ergo (@joinergo) is the next generation of revenue intelligence. Most sales reporting relies on CRM fields and manual updates, which means leaders end up making decisions without real evidence. Ergo instead pulls data directly from sales conversations—calls, emails, and meetings—to show trends...
Delta CIO to Retire After a Decade of Service
Delta Chief Information Officer Rahul Samant is retiring after a decade of steering the airline’s technology transformation, including a major cloud migration and resilience upgrades. Effective March 1, 2026, Amala Duggirala will assume the newly created chief digital and technology...
AI Startups: PMs Crave Research, Prototyping Leads Demand
The biggest opportunities for AI startups today We surveyed my readers about how they're using AI today, and more importantly, how they want to be using AI. For PMs, the biggest opportunity is research. User research shows the largest demand gap of...
Leverage Existing $100M ARR to Build AI In‑House
Ok so on LinkedIn this week I saw another founder I know at $100m+ ARR where growth has slowed … just leave the keys on the table. Quit. This founder said he was excited to explore what AI could do...
AI Ambition Meets Data Reality: Why Ungoverned Data Undermines Operational Success
Enterprises are racing to deploy AI, yet 41% still lack data‑classification tools, leaving vast amounts of unstructured data unmanaged. This “ROT” (Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial) data fuels security breaches, compliance failures, and inflated storage costs. Congruity360 highlights the gap between AI...
SaasRise CEO Mastermind Recaps for the Week of Jan 5 - 8, 2026
The SaaS CEO Mastermind for Jan 5‑8 tackled a full spectrum of growth levers, from outbound cold‑email metrics and AI‑enhanced video outreach to long‑cycle enterprise sales and product‑led strategies. Participants received concrete targets—0.5‑1.5% reply rates, one deal per 2,500‑10,000 emails—and tactics...
EU Antitrust Regulators to Decide on Google's Wiz Acquisition
European antitrust regulators will issue a decision on Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cloud‑security firm Wiz by February 10, 2026. The deal would be Alphabet’s biggest ever purchase and is also under review by the U.S. Department of Justice. Google has pledged...
Break‑up Emails: Elite Reps’ Secret to Faster Funnels
What you’re selling isn’t right for everyone. That’s why great sales reps aren’t afraid of break-up emails. They know when it’s time to lean in and when to qualify out. And in a scaling motion, that discipline matters more than...
Founder‑Led SaaS Thrives Amid Market Headwinds, 2025 Success
Thank you to all of the founders, partners, and colleagues we worked with in 2025. Despite headwinds in the broader market, founder-led SaaS companies continued to outperform, drawing meaningful buyer interest and achieving strong valuations. Last year, Vista Point Advisors...
Why Colos Are City Slickers and Hyperscalers Are Country Bumpkins
Datacenter location strategies diverge: colocation providers cluster in urban centers to serve latency‑sensitive customers, while hyperscale giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft concentrate massive facilities in low‑density regions with cheaper power and land. A Rice University and Harvard Business...
AI Lets Service Firms Outpace In‑house Development
You’re going to see more and more service providers go big on AI coding and other AI automation. To understand why, it’s useful to think about the power of distribution and the nature of the firm in the age of...
AI Speeds Site Building, but Can't Replace Strategic Judgment
Building a website with AI is faster than it has ever been. That speed exposes a problem most people miss. The reasons websites fail are rarely technical, and AI does not fix the underlying ones. At Crazy Egg, we built a site...
Cyberette Is Building Forensic-Grade AI for a Post-Truth Internet
Cyberette, a Dutch AI startup founded in 2024, offers forensic‑grade detection of deepfakes and manipulated media aimed at fraud and investigation teams. The platform delivers 99.7% accuracy with sub‑two‑second latency, supports real‑time on‑premise or cloud deployment, and provides provenance, watermarking,...
AI Lifts Most Roles' Quality, but Engineers Lag
One of the biggest surprises in my newsletter reader AI survey is how many people reported that AI improved the quality of their work (not just their productivity). Over 70% of PMs and founders, and 60% of designers, reported that AI...
Make Customers Feel Heard, Turn Churn Into Advocacy
A customer was about to crash out. 30 minutes later, he asked a question no one expected: "Are you the CEO?" My team member laughed when he told me. He thought it was funny because all he did was let...
AI Unicorn Quantexa Reports Revenue Boost, as Losses Halve
Quantexa, the UK‑based AI unicorn tackling financial crime, posted a 49% revenue increase to £126 million for the year ending March 2025, while pre‑tax losses fell by almost half to £25 million. The growth was driven by new customer wins and license expansions,...
From Double Revenue to Predictable, Sustainable Growth
We grew over 100% in 2025. But honestly, It was the hardest year we've ever had. On paper, the numbers were great. Our revenue doubled year-over-year, and our new implementation program exploded. We validated that we are solving a massive,...
NordPass Launches Authenticator for Personal Accounts
NordPass has introduced its Authenticator feature to personal account holders, extending a tool previously limited to business users. The built‑in TOTP generator creates time‑based one‑time passwords directly inside the NordPass vault, eliminating the need for a separate authenticator app. Biometric...
Best AI Tools to Learn Automation as a Beginner
AI‑powered platforms like Zapier, Make, and ChatGPT are making automation accessible to beginners. Zapier’s Copilot lets users describe workflows in plain language and generates step‑by‑step Zaps. Make provides a visual canvas with real‑time analytics, while ChatGPT explains core concepts and...
NordPass Adds Built-In TOTP Authenticator for Personal Accounts
NordPass has integrated a time‑based one‑time password (TOTP) authenticator directly into its password‑manager app for personal accounts. The new feature includes biometric verification and allows users to autofill codes from the mobile app or browser extension without switching apps. Setup...
Motive Debuts AI Dashcam to Help Logistics Fleet Operators Avoid Collisions
Motive Technologies unveiled an AI‑powered dashcam designed for logistics fleets, featuring a dual‑lens camera, AI‑driven risk detection, motion sensors, GPS, and a Qualcomm QCS6490 system‑on‑chip that delivers three times the computing power of rivals. The device records high‑resolution footage, captures...
SAP Expands AI Options for Retailers
SAP announced a suite of AI‑enhanced features for its retail portfolio at the NRF 2026 Big Show. The rollout, slated for the first half of 2026, adds a Retail Intelligence layer to the Business Data Cloud, AI‑assisted assortment planning via...
Upwind Rolls Out Choppy AI to Bring Transparent Natural-Language Security to Cloud Workloads
Upwind Security has launched Choppy AI, an artificial‑intelligence layer that lets security teams interact with its cloud‑native application protection platform using natural language. The tool converts plain‑text intent into structured, editable queries and policy rules, preserving full visibility into the...
CraftStory Adds Image-to-Video Generation to Power Long-Form AI Videos with Human ‘Actors’
CraftStory unveiled an image‑to‑video model that can generate up to five‑minute, human‑centric videos from a single image and script. The new system builds on its Model 2.0 video‑to‑video engine, using a parallelized diffusion pipeline to keep facial features, lighting, and motion...
Most Enterprises Aren't Ready for AI - What's Needed Is Composability
Enterprises attending Celosphere expressed strong interest in AI but admit they are unprepared. Legacy, monolithic processes hide decision logic, preventing modular, AI‑driven operations. Process Intelligence creates a living digital twin, exposing workflows so automation and orchestration become reusable building blocks....
Don’t Let a Junior Marketer Stall Your Growth
I was on a call with a Founder the other day. His growth was stuck. So we got to diagnose the issue. The culprit? He fell into the trap of the Junior Marketer. Here's how it happened and what the...
Freemium Conversion Benchmarks: 3‑8% Good, 10‑25% Great
What's good free-to-paid conversion 👇 Back in 2023 I looked at data from 1,000+ products in what (I think) was the most in-depth product benchmarking survey to date. What I found: Freemium (self-serve) -- think: Canva 😊 Good = 3-5%...
SaaS Founder Title Loses Luster in AI‑Dominated 2026
Is it OK to call yourself a SaaS Founder again in 2026? We're only a few days into 2026 but something has shifted. The vibe around SaaS vs. AI feels different...
Listen, Validate, Solve Together—Turn Angry Customers Into Advocates
A customer was ready to crash out. 30 minutes later he asked my team member "Are you the CEO?" All he did was let the guy talk, skip the defensiveness, and solve it together. Seen. Heard. Validated. That's the whole playbook.
ListKit's AI Score Filter Finds Every AI‑focused Company
Yes. The AI Score filter in @ListKitio helps you find companies doing AI work. From AI-native startups, to those that just mention it. It's pretty sick.
Avoid the Junior Marketer Trap to Unlock SaaS Growth
I was on a call with a SaaS Founder the other day. His growth was stuck. So we got to diagnose the issue. The culprit? He fell into the trap of the Junior Marketer. Here's how it happened and what the...