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subtl daily briefing

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Good morning. The AI industry's internal tensions spilled into public view this week as OpenAI accused Anthropic of overstating its revenue by a staggering $8 billion — right as a 20-year-old threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's home. Meanwhile, public software companies are down 50% from their peaks, Hollywood is fighting a $111B mega-merger, and Chainlink is quietly solving Wall Street's settlement mess. Let's get into it.

In today's briefing

  • 1.OpenAI vs. Anthropic: The $8B Revenue Dispute
  • 2.Violence Against AI Execs Puts Spotlight on Rhetoric
  • 3.Public SaaS Stocks Down 50% From Peaks
  • 4.Hollywood Fights Paramount's $111B Warner Bros Deal
  • 5.Chainlink Targets Wall Street's $58B Settlement Problem
  • Quick hits on other news
Latest Developments
SaaS

📉Leading Public Software Companies Are Now Down 50% From Their Peaks

The Rundown: The leading publicly traded software companies have collectively shed roughly 50% of their peak valuations, signaling a painful reset across the SaaS sector.

The details:

  • The top public software companies are now trading at approximately 50% below their all-time highs, representing trillions in lost market cap
  • The compression is driven by a combination of rising interest rates, slowing net new ARR growth, and AI disruption threatening legacy SaaS pricing models
  • Oracle was a notable exception, surging 12.70% recently on hopes of a software infrastructure rally tied to AI infrastructure spending
  • The drawdown is forcing SaaS founders to rethink growth-at-all-costs models and prioritize path to profitability
Why it matters: For SaaS founders and investors, this 50% decline isn't just a valuation story — it's a structural signal. The market is repricing software businesses that haven't demonstrated AI-native defensibility or durable net revenue retention. Companies that can show they are embedding AI to improve margins and reduce churn will be rewarded; those relying on legacy pricing and slow product cycles face an existential squeeze. If you're building or investing in SaaS right now, your AI integration roadmap is your valuation roadmap.

📰 Source: SaaStr

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Everything else in the news today

Tether launched its own self-custody crypto wallet, expanding beyond its stablecoin roots into direct consumer product territory
World Liberty Financial (the Trump family-backed DeFi project) is facing new scrutiny over conflicts of interest and governance structure
Cursor launched Parallel Agents, allowing developers to run multiple AI coding agents simultaneously on different parts of a codebase
Lovable added native payments functionality, enabling builders to monetize AI-generated apps directly within the platform
OpenAI's Codex agent now supports web browsing, bringing it closer to a fully autonomous software development assistant
Google is reportedly building a Cowork competitor, entering the collaborative workspace software market
GitHub launched Stacked PRs natively, a long-requested feature that lets developers chain pull requests for incremental code review
Morgan Stanley is expanding its Web3 and digital asset offerings as Bitcoin slides from recent highs
CPUID (makers of CPU-Z) suffered a supply chain attack, with malicious versions of the tool being distributed to users
Little Snitch, the popular macOS network monitor, announced a Linux version is in development
Rockstar Games was reportedly hacked again, following its high-profile GTA VI source code breach in 2022
A critical GPU security vulnerability was disclosed that breaks isolation between processes, with implications for shared cloud AI workloads
A leaked OpenAI internal memo circulated online, with Meta reportedly surpassing Google in some AI benchmark comparisons
The US began a naval blockade of Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz — markets initially shrugged, then rallied on Trump's claims that Iran is seeking a peace deal
Adobe previewed 'Indigo,' a new AI-native photo editing app designed specifically for the iPad
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