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
OpenAI Debuts GPT‑5.1-Codex-Max Coding Model and It Already Completed a 24-Hour Task Internally
OpenAI has launched GPT‑5.1‑Codex‑Max, a new agentic coding model that replaces GPT‑5.1‑Codex as the default in its Codex developer environment. The model introduces a compaction mechanism that enables long‑horizon reasoning across millions of tokens, cutting token usage by about 30% and allowing it to complete tasks that run for more than 24 hours. Benchmark results show Codex‑Max leading or matching Google’s Gemini 3 Pro on key coding tests, with 77.9% accuracy on SWE‑Bench Verified and 58.1% on Terminal‑Bench 2.0. The model is currently available through the Codex CLI and to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Edu and Enterprise users, with a public API slated for future release.
Rising Data Center Electricity Use Risks Blackouts During Winter Storms
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warns that rising electricity demand from data centers could strain the grid during winter storms, with overall winter demand projected 2.5% higher than last year, reaching 20 GW. Data‑center growth in the Mid‑Atlantic, West,...
Customer‑First Design Transforms SurveyGate Into Multi‑Feedback Platform
11 years after selling my first SaaS for $3M, and after building 3 agencies in between, I'm returning to the software space with SurveyGate. Ironically, I built it wrong the first time as a result of committing a cardinal SaaS...
AI Must Outgrow SaaS to Match Profitability
SaaS vs. AI economics...hype or reality? The tweet below inspired my latest post and template. What growth do we need to see in an AI company to match SaaS economics or make it more attractive than a SaaS company? I...
The Google Search of AI Agents? Fetch Launches ASI:One and Business Tier for New Era of Non-Human Web
Fetch AI announced a trio of products—ASI:One, Fetch Business, and Agentverse—aimed at building an "Agentic Web" where personal AI assistants can securely coordinate with verified brand agents to execute multi‑step transactions. ASI:One serves as an orchestration layer that stores user...
AI Ran My Startup for a Week, Revenue Soared
I just spoke to a group of 130 CEOs, CMOs and CROs about my backwards approach to AI. And despite all the AI guys thinking it's stupid, I seem to be the only guy who has an autonomous business… and...
Align Story, Trust, and Media for Founder Brand Growth
Every great founder brand lives at the intersection of three forces: 1. Storytelling creates understanding. 2. Founder branding creates trust. 3. New media creates distribution. When those three align, everything compounds. Every launch, every post, every interview reinforces the same...
Google Patches Worrying Chrome Zero-Day Flaw Being Exploited in the Wild - Here's How to Stay Safe
Google has released a patch for a critical zero‑day vulnerability (CVE‑2025‑13223) in the V8 JavaScript and WebAssembly engine of Chrome, rated 8.8/10 by the NVD. The type‑confusion flaw could allow remote attackers to achieve arbitrary code execution via a crafted...
How Founders Should Navigate Private Equity Inquiries
When we bring on a new client, we often find they've been receiving calls/emails from private equity firms for some time. As part of those calls, PE firms tend to ask a lot of questions and founders aren't always sure...
Craft Client Meals Guests Actually Look Forward To
How do you run client meals that people actually look forward to? I've led hundreds of customer lunches and dinners over the years. As Erica Mansfield Robin Merritt Emily Wilkes Kat Leong Lauren Olerich know well, I have a very...
Ray Clusters Hijacked and Turned Into Crypto Miners by Shadowy New Botnet
Cybersecurity firm Oligo has identified a new wave of attacks exploiting a critical flaw in Ray 2.6.3 and 2.8.0 that allows unauthenticated code execution via the job‑submission API. Threat actors, dubbed IronErn440, have been using AI‑generated payloads to infiltrate more...
Customer-First Companies Win: 10 Proven Practices
all successful companies are alike, each unsuccessful company is unsuccessful in its own way... all successful companies are alike: actually, truly, seriously, customer-first 🏆 below are 10 ways to explain what that means it's not just that they have Customer...
Give Away Your Product, Watch Users Multiply Organically
The counterintuitive viral growth strategy that got Read AI to millions of users (without spending on ads): I asked David Shim how Read.ai scaled so fast. His answer surprised me. Most meeting note apps force you to visit their website...
The #1 Clear Sign a VP Will Fail. Be Honest With Yourself When You See It
Jason Lemkin argues that the single best predictor of a VP or C‑level executive's failure is whether they have stopped doing the core work of their function—selling, coding, marketing, or meeting customers. He illustrates how hands‑on involvement preserves market insight,...
AI Free Users Cost More Than Traditional SaaS
ChatGPT was rumored to cost ~$700,000 PER DAY to operate at scale early on. According to Google, an AI-powered search query can be up to 10x more costly than a standard keyword search. The reason I share these stats is...
SaaS Success Starts with Beautiful, Intuitive Product Design
The first step to building a successful SaaS business isn’t marketing — it’s beauty. Build a product that’s so intuitive, so visually clean, and so obviously useful that people fall in love the moment they touch it. Solve a Real...
How to Cancel Surfshark and Get a Refund
Surfshark, ranked #2 among VPNs for its streaming speed and built‑in security tools, allows users to cancel subscriptions and obtain refunds through a simple online process. To stop auto‑renewal, customers log into their account, navigate to the Subscription > Payments...
Cloud and AI Usage Is Still a Concern for Businesses - and the Worries Are only Set to Rise
AWS’s latest research shows that more than nine in ten companies worldwide plan to raise overall IT spending (93%), cloud spending (97%) and cybersecurity budgets (90%). While 56% of respondents view public cloud as more secure and 81% believe it...
5 Interesting Learnings From Valve at $17 Billion in ARR
Jason Lemkin highlights Valve’s Steam platform as a model of ultra‑lean, high‑margin profitability, generating over $17 B in revenue with just 330‑360 employees and $50 M+ per Steam staffer. He extracts five lessons: charge premium commissions when you deliver outsized value; automate...
“Farm-to-Table Software”: How I Built a Thanksgiving Party Hub Using Lovable for Managing Invites, Dishes, Shared Recipes, and Photos
In this episode, Claire Vo walks listeners through building a Thanksgiving party hub with Lovable, covering everything from guest invites to shared recipes and photo galleries. She demonstrates how to enhance AI‑generated designs using Google Font pairings, Tailwind, and custom...
Validate, Manually Onboard, Then Scale for SaaS Growth
How I got the first 100 SaaS users. - Cold outreach (email/DM). - Target small creators > big businesses. - Build in public, everywhere. I followed the same playbook everytime: 1️⃣ Quick sanity check (Validate demand with ads/landing) 2️⃣ Reach out manually (Onboarding the first 10 users this...
The New UX Era
In this episode, Yaakov Carno examines the rise of the prompt‑bar as the new front‑door UX for AI‑enabled SaaS products, mapping over 40 real‑world examples from Canva to Notion. He explains how the traditional onboarding flow has shifted into a...
Is Privacy Really Dead? How Generations Are Rewriting Data Protection
The article argues that privacy is not dead but evolving, driven by digital‑native generations demanding transparency, control, and built‑in protection. Recent surveys from Pew, Cisco and Statista show a growing confidence‑gap: while most consumers feel capable of managing their data,...
AI Voice Fraud Is Exploiting Contact Centers
AI-generated voice cloning has moved from experimental demos to full production, with roughly one in three U.S. consumers reporting synthetic‑voice fraud in Q4 2024 and many incurring losses. Fraudsters now combine breached personal data with low‑cost text‑to‑speech and automated dialing to...
What Exactly Am I Paying For? Redefining Value in the Age of AI
Consultants are confronting client demands for clearer, outcome‑based value as AI reshapes professional‑services delivery. Smaller firms are already adopting outcome‑based pricing, shifting risk onto providers who must prove AI‑driven ROI through metrics such as productivity gains, cost reductions or new...
VentureBeat Launches “Beyond the Pilot” — a New Podcast Series Exploring How Enterprise AI Gets Real
VentureBeat is launching a new flagship podcast, "Beyond the Pilot: Enterprise AI in Action," premiering on November 19 and sponsored by Outshift by Cisco. The series will feature candid, technically rigorous conversations with senior AI leaders from companies such as...
Generate Action Items Directly From Reviews with Gemini 3
Try Gemini 3 on Databricks. It's as simple as: SELECT review, ai_query("databricks-gemini-3-pro", CONCAT("Generate action items for us based on this review: ", review)) FROM samples.bakehouse.media_customer_reviews LIMIT 1 https://lnkd.in/gK3rF5Dr
Cloudflare Explains Tuesday’s Outage that Temporarily Took Down ChatGPT
Cloudflare disclosed that its November 18, 2025 outage – the worst since 2019 – was triggered by a change to a ClickHouse query in its Bot Management system, which produced duplicate feature rows in a configuration file. The bloated file...
Color‑changing Notifications Give Instant Peripheral Progress Insight
One of my favorite touches in Fizzy are how notification cards change colors when they're done. And when they're stacked up, you can see slivers of cards behind cards. The peek, we call it. This notifications stack sits in the bottom...
IPO Peaks Fade: Patience Beats Day‑One Hype
What happened in 2025 IPOs if you bought near the peak: Figma (FIG): -74% 📉 Circle (CRCL): -73% 📉 CoreWeave (CRWV): -58% 📉 Klarna (KLNA): -38% 📉 Omada (OMDA): -31% 📉 Chime (CHYM): -30% 📉 Hinge Health (HNGE): -27% 📉 eToro (ETOR): -21% 📉 Average decline from peak: -44% The...
Cloudflare Outages Aren’t a Matter of if — but When
Cloudflare suffered a multi‑hour outage that knocked out major sites such as X, ChatGPT, Spotify and Canva, marking the third significant internet‑infrastructure failure in a month after incidents at Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The disruption was traced to...
Cortex Launches Enterprise AI Account Manager for B2B
Cortex🧠 from @ambral_ai brings an enterprise-grade AI Account Manager to every B2B customer. Congrats on the launch, @Sambrickman_ & Jack! https://t.co/bT7D6qk5iy https://t.co/QWKoc0nWu3
AI-Driven GTM: Top Marketing Tactics Revealed
SaaStr AI Live: Whats Working in Marketing as AI runs GTM https://t.co/ZsGOSMSkwk
Cursor Hit $1B ARR in 24 Months: The Fastest Scaling SaaS Ever?
Jason Lemkin highlights Cursor’s unprecedented growth, reaching over $1 B ARR in just 24 months and a $29.3 B valuation after a $2.3 B Series D—making it the fastest‑scaling B2B SaaS ever. The post attributes this speed to a product‑led strategy with zero marketing...
Feroot Secures $14M to Power AI Privacy Detection
Congrats to @FerootSecurity on their $14M Series A! Feroot's AI agents scan sites in seconds to catch privacy violations before audits do. Their research has exposed data leaks across healthcare, banking, e-commerce, and government sites, and even influenced federal legislation. https://t.co/IFScs4Zvib
Trava Prevents Importers From Overpaying Duties
Trava (@travaHQ) helps importers stop overpaying on duties. Tariffs shift constantly, and costly errors slip through the cracks. Trava finds them before they erode margin. Congrats on the launch, @pushkarlanka! https://t.co/YRu5F6wA2l https://t.co/D9eS7dKEHK
SaasRise Enterprise Mastermind Call Recap Nov 18, 2025
The post recaps a SaaS‑focused mastermind call that tackled seven strategic areas, from VP bonus design and lead‑generation tooling to a business pivot, sales compensation, talent hiring, operational monitoring, and phantom equity. Key takeaways include using new MRR rather than...
Replit's New Design Mode Built in Under 30 Seconds
Nice job @Replit on new Design mode This took < 30 seconds https://t.co/WfMNd5HeS3
Successful Exits Begin Long Before the Sale
A life changing exit doesn’t start at the finish line. It starts long before you’re ready to sell. Seun Oshinaike (@SeunOshinaike) knew that. He sold Street Tag on @acquiredotcom to a strategic buyer, taking the company even farther. Full interview: https://t.co/TLnv3EpAHp https://t.co/jAzRoJCjoJ
Three Humans, Twenty AI Agents: Same Revenue, Less Drama
In 2020, we had so many folks on Team SaaStr, we needed a second office. 20+. 3 designers, 5 in sales, 3 in content, etc. Today, we have 3 full-time folks and ... 20 full time AI agents Same scale,...
AI Agent Handles 77 Conversations, Amplifying Small Team Power
Our general AI Agent (“Digital Jason”) handled 77 conversations and 203 messages yesterday. Most were pretty good, I am sure. But the real point is I couldn’t have done it. Nor could our tiny team. This is some of the...
Jiga Secures $12M Series A to Accelerate AI-Driven Parts Manufacturing
Congrats to @Jiga3d on their $12M Series A! They're building the custom parts manufacturing platform for AI-era speed. Engineers upload drawings and get routed to vetted suppliers with direct communication, while Jiga automates the administrative grunt work and keeps humans in...
Infracost Raises $15M to Embed Cloud Cost Checkout
Congrats to @infracost on their $15M Series A! They’ve built the checkout screen for cloud—right inside GitHub/GitLab so engineers can see the cost of infra changes before deploy and how to optimize them. Already used by 3,500+ companies, including 10% of the...
Sustainable SaaS Growth Requires Sales Focus, Not Exit Chase
I’ve had the privilege of following many SaaS journeys over the years, but the story of Design Master Software is a pretty surprising. When founder David Robison came to the SaaS Institute after 25 years in the business and essentially...
Bootstrap Success: Efficiency, Small Teams, Profit Over Perks
I got VERY offended by a comment that said I wasn’t REALLY a bootstrapper because I’m not eating Ramen in my parent’s basement. What makes a real bootstrapper? It’s not what you think: 1. You love doing more with less....
Dreamforce Keynote Unveils Agentic Enterprise Collaboration
The Dreamforce Keynote is now on YouTube! ❤️ Welcome to the Agentic Enterprise: Humans and Agents working together! ❤️🤖 https://t.co/oKdoLA5zd5
Goldbridge's Ramp Boosts Property Values 20% in Three Months
Goldbridge (@trygoldbridge) is building Ramp for Real Estate. It's an all-in-one financial platform for real estate owners that can increase their property values by 20 percent in less than three months. Congrats on the launch, @alvinsalehi_ & Greg! https://t.co/esEgdymet5 https://t.co/rv1JcBxDkv
Explore Top B2B AI VCs with SaaStr Research
Want to learn more about top VCs in B2B + AI? Browse our new SaaStr AI Research VCs -> https://t.co/3JyImX3jMX We'll even help pick the best ones for you (and much more to come) https://t.co/rG7K5x5YYU
First‑Week Buyer Outreach Numbers Reveal Rapid Interest
"How many buyers reached out within the first week on @acquiredotcom?" https://t.co/8zCjkJeLGw
Cellbyte Secures $2.75M Seed to Accelerate Global Drug Launches
Congrats to Cellbyte on their $2.75M seed! Cellbyte helps pharmaceutical companies launch new drugs worldwide. Their platform streamlines pricing, market access, and regulatory workflows for drug launches by automating data extraction and insight generation, enabling faster, more efficient decision-making across global...