December 11, 2025

Power up

Hi there,

Here is this week's Hot or Not.

Hot: Data center value chain

AI infrastructure has a power bottleneck. 

Cue power generation vendors rushing in to capture their share of the data center boom.

For example, just this week: 

• Boom Supersonic raised $300M to build natural gas turbines for data center startup Cruose
• Fervo Energy raised $462M backed by Google for its geothermal plants

See 367 companies across 7 layers of the data center value chain in this market map.

Not: The metaverse

Meta didn’t mention the metaverse once on its latest earnings call. 

What’s replaced it? 

“Personal superintelligence.”

It’s about putting AI in people’s hands, from vision (smart glasses) to audio (voice AI). 

This is Zuck’s term for it. 

The evidence is clear in the company’s recent deals and partnerships:

• Smart glasses push across partnerships with EssilorLuxottica, Prada, Oakley, and Ray-Ban. 
• Scaling AI infrastructure, with partnerships spanning Google Cloud to CoreWeave, as Meta makes massive data center investments to build personal superintelligence.
• Energy as a strategic necessity, highlighted by a flurry of renewable partnerships from solar to geothermal to meet AI’s energy demands.
• Audio AI everywhere, with acquisitions of WaveForms AI, PlayAI, and Limitless this year signaling voice as the primary AI interface.

Meta’s betting that the AI revolution will be won by augmenting the physical world people inhabit, not virtual worlds they’ll (for the time being) never visit.

CB Insights customers can interact with Meta’s live strategy map to see where the $1.6T company is headed next here. 

Hot: Salesforce AI M&A

Salesforce is on an acquisition tear, picking up 10 companies so far this year.

The CRM giant is the top AI acquirer in 2025 so far. 

Its M&A strategy follows a pattern: over 1/3 of Salesforce’s acquisitions since 2020 were previously backed by its venture arm, Salesforce Ventures.

For example, AI agent startup Convergence raised pre-seed funding from Salesforce Ventures in September 2024 and was acquired by Salesforce in May 2025. 

Who’s next?

CB Insights customers can use this search to see Salesforce Ventures’ recent AI investments.

Not: Edtech valuations

India-based edtech Unacademy said its valuation is now under $500M, a steep drop from its ~$3.5B peak in 2021. 

It follows fellow Indian edtech BYJU’s, whose valuation collapsed from $22B to near-zero in 2024. 

The broader edtech sector has failed to sustain its pandemic-era momentum, with key companies like Coursera and Udemy trading well below their peak valuations.

The +1

Source: Reddit

Myopia = nearsightedness. This chart has its own vision problems.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. How can you spot tomorrow’s market leaders before they become obvious? Learn from CBI experts in our future tech hotshots on-demand briefing. 

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