Monday, December 1, 2025

NewsWatch

Daily Software Economy Brief for Private Equity Investors

SaaS Valuations Rebound to 8.2x Revenue Multiple

WSJ | 8:32 PM
↓ PE Impact: 2.5/10

Software-as-a-Service companies saw median valuations rise to 8.2x revenue in Q4 2025, up from 6.1x a year ago, signaling renewed investor confidence...

Databricks Eyes $55B Valuation in New Funding Round

WSJ | 10:32 PM
↓ PE Impact: 2.5/10

Data analytics platform Databricks is in advanced talks to raise $1.5 billion at a $55 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable private software companies...

Stripe Acquires Fintech Startup Lemon for $850M

Bloomberg | 2:32 AM
↓ PE Impact: 2.5/10

Payment giant Stripe announced the acquisition of Lemon, a Y Combinator-backed fintech startup specializing in embedded banking solutions for SaaS companies...

Wiz Raises $300M at $12B Valuation

TechCrunch | 6:32 PM
↓ PE Impact: 2/10

Cloud security platform Wiz closed a $300 million Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the four-year-old company at $12 billion...

AWS Launches New AI Chip to Compete with NVIDIA

The Information | 12:32 AM
↘ PE Impact: 0/10

Amazon Web Services introduced Trainium2, its latest custom AI training chip, claiming 40% better performance per dollar compared to NVIDIA's H100 GPUs...

OpenAI Announces GPT-5 with Breakthrough Reasoning Capabilities

TechCrunch | 4:32 AM
↘ PE Impact: 0/10

OpenAI unveiled GPT-5 this morning, marking what CEO Sam Altman calls 'the most significant leap in AI reasoning since GPT-4.' Early benchmarks show 95% accuracy on graduate-level mathematics...

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Prioritize valuation and analysis of enterprise SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) businesses with ARR > $10M, applying standard private equity analysis best practices (e.g., unit economics, retention/cohort analysis, revenue quality, growth sustainability, margin structure, and cash flow conversion). Ignore consumer apps. Maintain active coverage of: - Crypto infrastructure businesses (e.g., exchanges, custody, compliance, developer tooling, infrastructure providers), but ignore analysis of coins/tokens themselves unless their characteristics have a direct, material impact on the underlying infrastructure businesses. - Healthcare rollup strategies and platforms, with attention to acquisition economics, integration risk, payer mix, regulatory exposure, and scalability of the rollup model. [TEST EDIT]

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