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
Investors Can’t Get Enough of OpenAI and Databricks — Oracle, Not so Much
Investors are flooding AI leaders OpenAI and Databricks with massive capital, as OpenAI eyes a $10 billion infusion from Amazon that could push its valuation toward $750 billion, while Databricks secured a $4 billion Series L round at a $134 billion valuation. In contrast, Oracle startled markets by losing a key partner on its $10 billion Michigan data‑center project, highlighting execution risk in large‑scale AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, AI‑driven demand is boosting hardware makers like Micron, which posted record earnings on soaring memory sales, and the AI model race intensifies with new releases from Google, OpenAI, and Nvidia. ServiceNow’s proposed $7 billion acquisition of Armis sparked a 12% share decline, underscoring investor caution around aggressive expansion.
Beyond Big Data: Human Insight Drives Marketing Differentiation
my husband challenged me yesterday: if you say "go to market using research, not assumptions" companies are gonna think you mean Big Data 👀 my husband is an engineer, so I get where he's coming from... data means big complicated...
Master Full-Stack PLG with Proven $1B System
In the last 9 years, I've helped companies like GrooveHQ, Boomi, Microsoft, Keap and 400+ others generate over $1B in self-serve revenue. Through that work, I noticed something interesting: Most PLG operators (myself included early on) only knew pieces of...
Master PDFs Like a Pro with 30% Off LightPDF
LightPDF, an AI‑powered all‑in‑one PDF editor, is offering a 30% discount on both its Annual and Perpetual licenses via the promo code techradar30. The Annual plan drops from $89.99 to $34.99, granting 12,000 AI credits per year, while the Perpetual...
Qualify for Success, Not Just a Signature
A common gap in the founder selling playbook: the Customer Success Qualifying Matrix. Most people know the Sales Qualifying Matrix—the framework that helps predict whether a prospect will buy. Common examples are BANT, MEDDIC, and SPICED. This Sales Qualifying Matrix...
Bootstrapped Profits Beat VC Promises Every Time
50+ VC and private equity firms. A full year of pitches, term sheets, and big promises. I walked away from every single one. And I’d do it again because: 1. Dividends Beat Lottery Tickets VC money is a lottery ticket that might pay...
1Password Integrates with Cursor to Secure AI-Driven Development Workflows
1Password announced a partnership with AI‑code editor Cursor to embed just‑in‑time secret management into the development workflow. A new Hooks Script delivers credentials from 1Password Environments only when the Cursor AI agent requests them, eliminating hard‑coded tokens and plaintext keys....
Pay More for Quality Leads, Not Cheap Ones
Cheaper and more leads don’t mean growth. Here's a common mistake in B2B SaaS: Teams celebrate a $50 cost per lead (because it's cheap), but ignore what happens next. Low-cost leads look great on a dashboard until you realize only...
Demand Generation Should Be Year‑Round, Not Seasonal
Sometimes we have to push our customers out of their comfort zone. What's in their best interest is not always the easiest path. We had a customer at @ListKitio that wanted to only run outbound cold email campaigns a couple of...
Cyata Flags Agentic AI Supply-Chain Risk in Cursor Remote Code Execution Bug
Cyata Security disclosed a critical remote code execution flaw in Cursor’s integrated development environment, catalogued as CVE‑2025‑64106 with an 8.8 severity rating. The bug stemmed from the Model Context Protocol’s installation workflow, where a malicious deep‑link could masquerade as the...
Never Make Lead Generation Seasonal—Build Demand Year‑Round
Sometimes we have to push our customers out of their comfort zone. What's in their best interest is not always the easiest path. We had a customer at ListKit that wanted to only run outbound cold email campaigns a couple...
How Do You Make Joint CEO Leadership Models Work in Practice? Here's How
Joint‑CEO structures are gaining traction as companies seek diverse leadership perspectives, but they often stumble without clear governance. The article outlines practical steps to avoid common pitfalls, such as ambiguous authority and cultural clashes, by establishing defined roles, shared metrics,...
Building Systems of Trust in the Age of AI While Staying Human at Heart
HubSpot overhauled its customer reference program, collapsing an 18‑step manual process into a five‑phase workflow powered by HubSpot automation, Slack, and AI copilots. The rebuild introduced a Trust Readiness Model that scores relationship maturity, product adoption, and growth signals, turning...
Two Heads Better than One? Will the Co-CEO Leadership Model Become a Permanent Fixture or a Fleeting Trend?
The co‑CEO leadership model is re‑emerging, especially among technology firms, after a mixed track record in the past. Companies like Netflix and Oracle have leveraged dual CEOs to balance content, technology, and operational expertise, while others such as SAP and...
NIST Adds to AI Security Guidance with Cybersecurity Framework Profile
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued a draft Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) Profile for Artificial Intelligence, linking AI‑specific risks to the widely adopted CSF. The profile organizes guidance into three focus areas—secure, defend and thwart—to help firms protect...
Pinned Chats in ChatGPT Are Here – and so Is a Mildly Annoying Restriction
OpenAI has added a pinned‑chats feature to ChatGPT, allowing users to keep up to three conversation threads at the top of the sidebar on both web and mobile apps. The option is accessible across Free, Plus, and Pro tiers, making...
Is Zendesk Building a Glean Competitor with Its Unleash Acquisition? Not Exactly, But Here’s What’s Really Happening
Zendesk announced the acquisition of Unleash, an Israeli AI‑powered enterprise search startup with more than 70 connectors, to embed permission‑based retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) and AI agents directly into Slack and Microsoft Teams. The move targets internal employee‑service workflows—IT, HR, and...
You’re Doing Agents All Wrong – Why You Should Focus on Human Attention
Duncan Anderson of Barnacle Labs argues that enterprises are misapplying AI agents by treating them as mere automation tools. He suggests agents should be deployed to capture scarce human attention and address organizational whitespace where judgment‑heavy work is currently uneconomical....
SharpSpring CRM Review
SharpSpring delivers an all‑in‑one marketing automation platform with a built‑in CRM aimed at solopreneurs, agencies and SMBs. It offers a visual campaign builder, lead scoring, email and social tools, and unlimited users under a flat‑rate pricing model tied to contact...
Reinventing the Dial-Up Modem (2019)
Simple, a healthcare app, replaced paper registers and landline calls with an offline‑first solution that uses DTMF tones to transmit patient numbers through a toll‑free line. Nurses initiate a call, the app plays the patient’s number as DTMF, and Twilio...
Microsoft AI CEO Admits Gemini 'Can Do Things that Copilot Can’t Do'
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman publicly acknowledged that Google’s Gemini 3 can perform tasks that Microsoft’s Copilot cannot, a rare admission in the AI arms race. He highlighted Gemini’s multimodal strengths while emphasizing Copilot’s real‑time visual assistance and integration across Windows,...
Founders Need Q&A Practice—Try This Free Tool
🎙️ After years around startups, one thing stood out: founders spend weeks preparing pitch decks but rarely practice how they answer questions from investor or media. I built a small tool to help founders rehearse answers out loud and get...
Wolfram Automattica
Stephen Wolfram has joined Automattic as a special advisor, bringing his computational expertise to the WordPress ecosystem. Wolfram, known for the Wolfram Language and the knowledge engine behind Wolfram|Alpha, has been engaging with Automattic teams since early 2024. The partnership...
FinnyAI's AI Boosts Advisor Revenue, Drives $7.7M Asset Gains
Congrats to @FINNYAI on their $17M Series A! The $90T+ wealth management industry still prospects with tools built for other industries, with advisors spending ~60 hours on cold outreach to convert one client. Finny's AI matches advisors with high-intent prospects,...
Optimize the Offer First, Ads Will Follow
I don't "optimize" ads first. I optimize the offer. If the landing page can explain the value in 8 seconds and the pricing has a clear next step, even mediocre ads work. Fix the offer → ads get cheaper, CAC drops, ROAS...
Oracle Has One Last Ampere Hurrah - New Cloud Platforms Offer up to 192 Custom Arm Cores, and Aren't OCI...
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure launched A4 Standard instances powered by Ampere Computing’s AmpereOne M silicon, offering up to 192 custom Arm cores per chip in both virtualized and bare‑metal forms. The configurations deliver up to 48 OCPUs (96 cores) with up to...
Founderpath to Deploy $5‑10M Before Christmas, Leading Startup Investor
everyone wants to close before Christmas. busy day at Founderpath today. we'll fund ~$5-10m more before holiday Founderpath is, by far, the most active investor in Software startups by deal count https://t.co/sU5DGqneOU
AI-Native B2B Firms Surge, Seat‑based SaaS Lag
The Great B2B Bifurcation of 2025 Palantir +142%. HubSpot -51%. Despite the fact both businesses end the year pretty strong. Some patterns from the top 25 B2B / SaaS public companies: What's working: 🔼AI-native infrastructure (Palantir, Cloudflare, MongoDB) 🔼Mission-critical + high switching costs (CrowdStrike, Palo...
I Tried the Apple Music App for ChatGPT, and It Felt Like Talking to a Music‑obsessed Friend
Apple Music has launched a ChatGPT app that lets users generate playlists, discover songs, and play short music clips via conversational prompts. Subscribers can link their Apple Music accounts to save the AI‑crafted playlists directly to their library. The integration...
New InstallAware X18 Launching With Solana Payment System
InstallAware Software has unveiled InstallAware X18, its latest installer platform that embeds a Solana cryptocurrency payment system directly into the setup wizard. The solution converts fiat to SOL in real time, records each transaction on the Solana blockchain, and charges...
Snowflake Update Caused a Blizzard of Failures Worldwide
Snowflake’s latest release introduced a backwards‑incompatible schema change, causing a major outage that affected 10 of its 23 global regions for about 13 hours. The failure prevented users from executing queries and ingesting data across Azure and AWS data centres...
Speed of Insight Delivery Determines Organizational Progress
Progress is constrained by how fast information moves. It has nothing to do with raw intelligence. Ambition does not fix it. Neither do longer hours. Information has to travel. It has to reach the people who can decide, and it...
Microsoft, Google Rule AI Vendor Market for Enterprises
Gartner’s 2025 report crowns Microsoft and Google as the dominant AI vendors for enterprises. Microsoft’s broad partner and platform ecosystem gives it an edge in enterprise‑wide AI, while Google’s integrated agentic AI stack positions it as the company to beat...
Show HN: Spice Cayenne – SQL Acceleration Built on Vortex
Spice.ai announced Spice Cayenne, a next‑generation data accelerator that pairs the Vortex columnar file format with an embedded SQLite‑based metadata layer. The solution targets multi‑terabyte object‑storage workloads, delivering up to 1.4× faster TPC‑H queries and 14% faster ClickBench runs while...
Simplify LLM Scaling with OpenRouter, Avoid Model Chaos
I can be slow sometimes I didn't totally get why products like @OpenRouterAI are a big deal but this week I hit API issues with OpenAI and had to manually add a fallback to Anthropic. A real pain. And I also...
Three Key Snapchat Trends Every CDO Must Know
As a Chief Digital Officer, 3 things jumped out to me in Snapchat for Business 's latest report. Let's unpack what you need to know before 2026 - ready? And, get the full Snapchat Generation report: https://lnkd.in/eBs4gESm #snapchatpartner
Palona Goes Vertical, Launching Vision, Workflow Features: 4 Key Lessons for AI Builders
Palona AI, founded by former Google and Meta engineers, announced a vertical shift into the restaurant and hospitality sector with two new products—Palona Vision and Palona Workflow. Vision leverages in‑store security cameras to monitor queue lengths, table turnover, and kitchen...
'A Lot of People Cry Using the App — We’ve Had Users Say It Put Into Words Things They’d Been...
Mark Manson and AI entrepreneur Raj Singh have launched Purpose, an AI‑mentor app that delivers personalized self‑help coaching directly on users' phones. The platform tailors advice to individual values, fears and goals while explicitly refusing therapy‑level issues and directing users...
SaasRise CEO Mastermind Recaps for the Week of December 15-18, 2025
The SaaS CEO Mastermind for Dec 15‑18, 2025 tackled market contraction, product‑market fit ambiguity, AI positioning, and 2026 strategy. Leaders were urged to shift toward enterprise customers, secure multi‑year deals, and treat AI as an optional productivity boost. Recommendations emphasized a unified...
Beyond Code: How Bitrix24’s AI Powers End-to-End Project Management
Bitrix24 launches a full‑lifecycle AI‑powered project management platform that embeds intelligence directly into planning, execution, and reporting. The solution replaces fragmented AI add‑ons with a unified workspace that combines task management, Gantt/Kanban views, chat, video calls, and CRM. AI CoPilot...
OpenAI Now Accepting ChatGPT App Submissions From Third-Party Devs, Launches App Directory
OpenAI announced that third‑party developers can now submit apps for inclusion in a new ChatGPT App Directory, accessible from the sidebar and chat interface. The submission process went live on December 17, with approved apps slated to roll out to users...
Worried About Ransomware? IDrive Launches New Salesforce Backup Tool for Greater Data Protection
IDrive has launched a dedicated Salesforce Backup service that provides unlimited storage and granular recovery for both standard and custom Salesforce data. Priced at $20 per user per year, the solution includes daily automated backups, AES‑256 encryption, and ransomware‑ready point‑in‑time...
AI Startups Bleed Revenue Due to Perfectionist Promises
The AI bubble is cracking. AI startups are losing 50% of their revenue within a year. A new report is circulating in VC circles, and the numbers are brutal. I just read Kyle Poyar ’s latest report, and one chart...
Scale Faster: Hire Leaders Better Than Yourself
How do founders that have never done it before scale to $10m, $100m, $1B in ARR? They hire people better than them This is the mistake most Stretch VPs make. They don’t hire folks better & later more experienced than...
5 Things Businesses and Users Should Remember when Using AI Chatbots
The article warns that AI chatbot conversations are often stored long‑term, exposing sensitive personal data. It argues that superficial redaction is insufficient; true privacy requires permanent data removal and explicit retention policies. Transparency about data handling and minimizing collected information...
Metricable Integration Arriving Soon on Acquired.com
New @metricablecom integration coming to @acquiredotcom soon: https://t.co/Juquyki0zL
Shopify Subscription App Generates Predictable $30K Monthly Profit
Recurring revenue is king. Live on @acquiredotcom: Shopify subscription app helping merchants turn one-time buyers into predictable monthly revenue. > $29K ARR > $32K TTM revenue > $30K TTM profit > 190 paying merchants Full listing: https://t.co/zCumfIm8mD https://t.co/wYOQ3FwbAz
From Experiment to Infrastructure: What’s Next for AI?
AI agents dominated 2025 with a record 433 deals, outpacing med‑tech and spreading across cybersecurity, supply‑chain, sales and customer service. Executives at Box and Omnea say firms are shifting from wild experimentation to intentional, outcome‑driven AI strategies, while Bloom & Wild treats...
ExtendHQ's /Edit API Automates Complex PDFs for Fortune 500
.@ExtendHQ's new /edit API enables filling out any PDF. It's already being used by F500 companies to automate even the most complex document layouts. https://t.co/BGz6doc7IE https://t.co/EX421nd3YV
Pulse AI Launches Free Public Document Intelligence Platform
After processing 1B+ pages for global banks, top private equity firms, Fortune 50s, and large insurers, @Pulse__AI is opening its document intelligence platform to everyone. Production-grade parsing is now publicly available via the platform and API. 20K free pages for all. Congrats...