Salesforce can't stop buying software companies

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Salesforce buys Fin: In a $3.6 billion deal, CRM giant Salesforce will acquire Fin, the startup previously known as Intercom. Intercom rebranded to Fin this year after its eponymous AI agent became the customer service company’s main offering. Fin was well-known for rebuilding its internal operations to take advantage of the AI era; Salesforce recently purchased Contentful, a CMS provider.
1Password buys Apono: Password vault 1Password has purchased Apono, a startup that provides credentials to AI agents on a “just-in-time” basis. 1Password described the purchase as a response to customer demand for better agentic permissions with firm guardrails, claiming that, with the addition of Apono to its roster, it has become “the access layer” rather than a point solution.
Roku sold: On Friday, we reported that Roku was up for sale. Today, we can report who purchased it and for how much. Fox, and $22 billion (enterprise value). The price isn’t a massive surprise, but the deal is rattling Wall Street all the same. While Roku shares have appreciated since the deal leaked, Fox fell as much as 15% today after it was identified as the buyer-to-be. (What a run of deals! You love to see it!)

TWiST 500

On Friday, Lon covered Mistral’s impending funding event, which could give it a new valuation above $20 billion. Sitting here a few days later, I wonder if that number is about to go up — way up.

Why? The recent Anthropic-White House mess that spilled into public view Friday when Anthropic announced that it had pulled global access to both its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models after the government, “citing national security authorities, [issued] an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.” (I wrote a tick-tock here, if that’s your sort of thing.)

As those terms were impossible to meet while still offering the models to commercial partners, Anthropic yanked them both. For everyone. Precisely who is to blame for the mess depends a bit on your priors — Is Anthropic a good or bad actor? Can we trust the Trump administration to tell the truth? — but both sides of the argument are working to resolve the spat quickly.

Quickly enough? I doubt the government and the Anthropic boffins can patch up their differences quickly enough for Mistral to avoid picking up new customers, miffed that their access to American AI models now hinges on the whim of the executive branch. So, while Anthropic has once again found itself in the barrel, at least there’s some sunshine out there for the other AI labs in the TWiST500! — Alex

p.s. What’s good for Mistral in Europe is good for China around the world; if global companies lose trust in American AI being generally available, they may turn to either regionally-derived models or resort to fine-tuning open-weight offerings from China.

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This Week in Startups

E2299: Two days before SpaceX launches the largest IPO in history at a flat $135/share, our VC roundtable drops a scorcher: The top 1% of seed deals might actually be underpriced. Plus: the "Sequoia scam" dual-tranche controversy, tokens-for-equity deals, and whether Claude Fable 5 is a true step function.
Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Michael Downing (Castalia Capital), and Paige Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures) join Alex to go deep on Seed investing, startup economics, AI spend, and the impact of smarter AI on the founder journey.

E2298: Jason goes solo dolo this week, in a blockbuster episode capturing his reaction to the “Bad VC Stories” going around X, the Everything App. Jason recalls some of the high and low points of his career in venture fundraising, including an incredible story about legendary investor John Doerr going the extra mile to attend his Mahalo pitch. PLUS Jason chats with Sue Khim of Brilliant about the education company’s new AI tutor, Koji, and how actually empowering users can help the industry turn around its bad reputation.

E2297: Why does Anthropic want to slow down the development of AI? Aren’t they busy doing just the opposite? And what does Jason think about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal, that the American people should get 50% stakes in all the major AI companies? Is JCal really considering proposals around Universal Basic (or even High) Income policies? We dig into these questions in a news-heavy TWiST. Plus ComfyUI founder Yoland Yan demos the free, open-source platform, which simplifies and fine-tunes text-to-image and text-to-video workflows, and has been used on high-profile projects like the holiday Coca-Cola ads and “Wizard of Oz” at the Vegas Sphere.

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