GoKawiil
Tech News
Crusoe, the company behind construction of one of OpenAI's largest data center projects, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round valuing it at nearly $31 billion. The company is now expanding into factory-built, smaller-scale data centers alongside its large infrastructure work.
Investors have approached OpenAI proposing a fresh funding round that could value the company at $1.2 trillion, though no formal talks have begun, according to people familiar with the matter. Some backers see the round partly as a mechanism for employees to sell shares, similar to the roughly $7 billion secondary sale OpenAI completed in August following its $122 billion raise at an $852 billion valuation in March.
OpenAI has held early talks with investors about raising fresh capital at a valuation exceeding $1.2 trillion, according to reports. The round would come as the company prepares for a widely expected public listing next year.
Italian software company Bending Spoons is acquiring workplace collaboration platform Miro in a $1.36 billion cash deal, valuing the equity at $1.79 billion. That figure represents a roughly 92% drop from the $17.5 billion valuation Miro commanded in late 2021 during the pandemic-driven remote work boom. Despite the steep markdown, Miro reports $600 million in annual recurring revenue, over four million paying users, and profitability with $435 million in net cash.
Wonderful, an AI startup founded only last year, has reached a $5 billion valuation and already employs 650 people. The company is now expanding its forward-deployed engineering teams globally as it works toward a workforce of 1,000.
A valuation framework called the Financial Truth Ladder, developed by TEOL Capital, describes how institutional buyers actually assess a business before assigning it a price. Rather than starting with EBITDA multiples, buyers first test whether the company's financials, earnings, and cash flow can be trusted, then examine owner dependency and future predictability. Each of the five questions either builds buyer confidence or introduces doubt that affects the final offer.
An Entrepreneur opinion piece argues that business owners commonly misunderstand valuation, believing EBITDA multiplied by a market multiple fully determines their company's worth. In reality, the multiple itself is derived from buyers' judgments about risk, management quality, customer diversification and the durability of future cash flows, not a fixed industry number. Two companies with identical EBITDA can receive very different offers depending on how confident buyers are that those earnings will continue after a sale.