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And now, here is this week's Hot or Not.
Hot: Oncology collabs
Drug deals are helping pharma giants move the needle.
Bristol Myers Squibb and BioNTech’s $11B cancer drug deal, announced this week, is the latest in a flurry of activity.
The partnership intensity reflects broader market dynamics in the AI-derived biological drugs space, which has seen $2.9B in funding over the past 2 years.
Pharma leaders’ aggressive partnership strategies are helping them tap into high-growth markets that can fuel revenue growth.
Based on recent partnership activity, six therapeutic areas are driving the highest-value strategic alliances, with oncology leading the pack in terms of both deal size and frequency:
Oncology
AI-powered drug discovery
Immunology
Neuroscience & CNS disorders
Obesity & metabolic diseases
Genetic therapeutics
AI integration is the common denominator, enabling more efficient drug discovery across all categories.
The SEO industry is facing an existential crisis as AI search — through chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity, as well as Google’s AI Overviews feature — siphon user attention (and clicks) away from organic search links.
Now, SEO incumbents like Similarweb and Semrush are pivoting to support generative engine optimization (GEO) — the next evolution of SEO.
Startups are also jumping on the nascent market to offer capabilities like AI response analysis, A/B testing for AI outputs, and brand authority building.
Equity deals to the GEO market are on pace to more than double this year. The 6 deals we’ve seen in 2025 so far have all gone to early-stage companies, such as:
YC-backed AthenaHQ, which surpassed 1M AI responses analyzed in May
Scrunch AI, which grew its enterprise base to 25+ clients within 6 months of launch
Brandlight, which debuted a partnership with EY and Plante Moran earlier this week
Tech giants are also vertically integrating into energy production — including cementing relationships with nuclear power providers — to ensure access to consistent power sources for AI infrastructure.
On this front, while Amazon acquired 1 nuclear energy startup last year and invested in another, Alphabet and Microsoft have both outpaced the cloud giant in terms of relationship activity.
ChatGPT’s new workplace productivity features include a note-taking function (Record Mode) that can listen to and transcribe calls and then summarize key details (including citations to the transcript).
In our interviews with Otter.ai customers, while they love the platform’s functionality, it’s clear the switching costs are low. For instance, this customer, who gave Otter.ai a 10/10 CSAT score, said it “wouldn't be difficult to switch to a new solution” and that the likelihood of renewal depends on Otter.ai’s costs not going up.
Investors have already largely pulled out of the meeting & call intel market, with these AI platforms raising just 4 deals in the last 2.5 years — after seeing 17 deals in 2022 alone.
CBI customers can see who else might be in trouble with the full market report.
The +1
Source: u/i-like-dutch-cheese via Reddit
Scale fail. Seven countries, seven different measurements. One bad chart.
P.S. Earlier today, our analysts went live to discuss how Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft are preparing to meet growing AI workloads and shape the future of the cloud. Grab the recording for free here.
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