Alphabet (Google’s cooler, more buttoned-up alter ego) is making headlines for dropping $32 billion in cold, regulatory-risk-laden cash on Wiz, a cloud security startup barely five years old. Not only is it Google’s biggest acquisition ever, but it’s also 2025’s largest M&A deal so far.

This isn’t their first tango—Google tried to buy Wiz for $23 billion last year, but the startup bet on an IPO. One year, one bigger bag later, Wiz said yes.

🧙‍♂️Who the Heck is Wiz?

Founded in 2020 by Assaf Rappaport and his fellow ex-Microsoft crew (who have already sold a previous startup to Microsoft for $320 million), it offers cloud-native security tools that work across all major cloud platforms, flagging and prioritizing risks across the company’s entire cloud environment. Their USP is that they are simple, fast, and actually useful for multi-cloud setups¹—which is every large enterprise nowadays.

💰Why the massive spend?

Because Google Cloud is still stuck in third place, trailing AWS and Microsoft Azure in the battle for cloud dominance. Google’s hoping that snapping up Wiz will finally help shake up the hierarchy.

Wiz’s CEO put it bluntly: “Becoming a part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: It will accelerate out rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a standalone company.”

Although Wiz insists it’ll continue supporting other cloud platforms post-acquisition we can read between the lines here: Google Cloud just got first dibs on whatever Wiz is cooking up next.

📉Wallstreet isn’t sold

Alphabet’s stock dipped 4% after the announcement as the math isn’t mathing for this deal: Google is paying 30x Wiz’s projected $1B revenue for 2025², well above the usual 10x software firms go for, according to Barron’s.

Then there’s the regulatory minefield. Alphabet’s already battling antitrust suits, and the DOJ just revived calls for breaking off Chrome—and maybe Android. A $3.2B breakup fee is in place if the deal doesn’t clear. So yeah, it’s bold. But it’s also risky.

On March 17, China’s top electric automaker, BYD, turned up the heat for its competition: a brand-new charging system that juices your battery with 400km of range in just 5 minutes. That’s right, your EV could top up faster than you can fill up at a servo. This ultra-fast charging won’t stay theoretical for long either—it’s rolling out next month with new sedans and SUVs.

Tesla’s China story on the other hand is looking shaky. Deliveries in China plunged 49% YoY in February, with BYD leaving Musk in the dust across key metrics. And with Elon’s questionable PR strategy, the timing couldn’t be worse.

And BYD’s success is not just about charging speed. This new charging platform also lets BYD’s upcoming models hit 100km/h in 2 seconds flat, and markets were frothing it. BYD shares surged 6% on announcement day, taking its 2025 rally past 50% and catapulting its market cap to more than $150 billion—bigger than Ford, GM, and VW combined.

Gains fell back this week though as investors were acting cautious, still, as BYD races ahead, all eyes are now on its Q4 earnings, dropping this Monday (March 24). But if this five-minute flex is anything to go by, BYD isn’t just keeping pace, it’s leading the charge.

PepsiCo is acquiring cult-favorite Poppi for a fizzy $1.95 billion, locking in one of the buzziest beverage brands of the decade. Not bad for a drink that started at a Texas farmers’ market with apple cider vinegar and a dream.

Poppi is a big player in the “functional sodas” boom—drinks that look and taste like your childhood faves but come with added health benefits. Think prebiotics, probiotics, vitamins, or adaptogens, with less sugar and a side of “clean girl aesthetic.” And business is booming: the functional drinks market hit $134B in 2024 and is expected to reach $231B by 2033. Poppi and its main rival, Olipop, now command 2.7% of the carbonated beverage market in the U.S.

Poppi’s story began as a homemade concoction from husband-and-wife duo Allison and Stephen Ellsworth, sold at local farmers’ markets. It landed a spot on Shark Tank in 2018, where it scored funding from Rohan Oza (aka the guy behind Vitaminwater’s rise) and rebranded from “Mother Beverage” to Poppi. That moment changed everything. With a slick new brand, better distribution, and startup savvy, Poppi evolved into one of America’s fastest-growing beverage names with $100M+ revenue, shelf space in Whole Foods, Target, Amazon, Costco, and even back-to-back Super Bowl ads—a flex usually reserved for Bud Light or Pepsi itself.

So why did Pepsi open its wallet? With rival Olipop raising $50M at a nearly $2B valuation, Coca-Cola launching its own prebiotic soda line, and Gen Z swearing off traditional sugary drinks, Pepsi couldn’t afford to sit this one out. Poppi has what Big Soda can’t replicate overnight: community, cool factor, and emotional resonance.

Looks like the only thing booming on Wall Street right now is the layoffs. Morgan Stanley is cutting 2,000 staff this month, sparing only its 15,000 financial advisers. The rest of the 80,000-strong workforce? Fair game. Why? Because nobody’s leaving voluntarily. In a shaky job market, no one’s risking the “funemployment” dream when the economy’s one bad headline away from going down the toilet.

And Morgan Stanley’s not alone. Goldman Sachs has brought forward its annual cull, aiming to cut 3-5% of staff as part of its spring cleaning (Autumn for Aus.). Meanwhile, Bank of America just let go of 150 underperforming junior bankers, some of whom were straight out of uni. — talk about a brutal intro to investment banking.

It’s all a sharp pivot from the banker euphoria post-Trump 2.0 election win. Back then, Wall Street was buzzing over a possible M&A revival. Now, not so much (aside from the recent Google and Pepsi deals of course). Inflation expectations are climbing again, and J-Pow is stuck between a rate-cut rock and a reflation hard place. One wrong move, and we could be back to 2020-style prices.

All of this means that the much-hyped “deal tsunami” of early 2025 is still chilling offshore. There’s hope it’ll crash in later this year, as one banker put it: “Nobody knows what’s up.”

X is back at a $44 billion valuation—the same price Elon Musk paid for it in 2022. After nearly two years of chaotic rebranding and advertiser boycotts.

The boost comes after X raised about $1 billion in new funding, with Musk himself investing alongside firms like 1789 Capital and Darsana Capital. A separate private share sale³ around the same time also valued X at $44 billion, suggesting that investors are warming to the platform.

Just months ago, X was circling the kitchen drain. Fidelity⁴ had valued the company at under $10 billion, and banks that helped fund the $44 billion buyout were stuck holding $12.5 billion in debt they couldn’t offload⁵.

This latest funding helps X pay off over $1 billion in high-interest loans—reportedly costing the company around 13% annually. Musk also gave X investors a 25% stake in his AI startup, xAI, which has climbed to a $45 billion valuation.

Politics may also be playing a role. As Musk’s ties to Trump have grown stronger, brands appear to be reconsidering their ad boycott. Advertising giant WPP said it has seen “more clients coming back” to X in recent months and is now working with the company to help attract more brand spending. While Musk’s political alignment has hurt Tesla’s image among some consumers, X seems to be benefitting from its perceived influence.

• Trump released files from the assassination of JFK, with over 80,000 pages released the new info revealed that the FBI and CIA knew about the threat Lee Harvey Oswald posed but failed to act, and later choosing not to reveal this to the Warren Commision - instead prioritising their covert operations over transparency. Read the docs here and Trump’s EO here.

• Cyclone Alfred in Aus. may have caused AU$ 1.2 billion in damage and decreased quarterly GDP by 0.25%, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

• Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy (again) this week, after restructuring in 2019, owners believe that they wish to liquidate now and wash their hands of the brand.

• Harvard University now offers tuition-free education to students whose family income is below 200k USD, and all expenses paid for families who earn less than 100k USD.

• Jerome Powell left the Fed fund rate target at 4.25-4.50% in the Federal Reserve meeting this week.

• Germany has pledged to invest over US$ 1 trillion into domestic defense over the next 12 years, potentially boosting GDP by 0.3-2.7% a year.

• Trump pulled over AU$ 400 million in funding from seven Australian universities with the ANU being the first to acknowledge their loss of funding.

• Boxing icon and former heavyweight champion George Foreman has passed away at the age of 76.

1. Multi-cloud setups: When a company uses multiple cloud service providers instead of relying on just one. This strategy helps reduce risk, avoid vendor lock-in, and take advantage of the best features from each provider.

2. 30x Wiz’s Projected $1B revenue for 2025: Google is paying ~30 times Wiz’s forecasted revenue in 2025. This means that if Wiz is makes the expected $1 billion next year, Google is valuing the company at $30 billion. By comparison, Barrons reports that most software companies tend to sell for around 10x forward revenue.

3. Separate Private Share Sale: Also known as a secondary sale, it is a transaction where an existing shareholder of a private company sells their shares to a third-party buyer. Unlike a primary sale, the money from a secondary sale goes to the selling shareholder. Although X didn’t make any money from the secondary sale, the fact that investors were willing to value the company at $44 billion is noteworthy.

4. Fidelity: A large brokerage firm and asset manager whose public valuations can influence how others view a company’s worth. Their website is here if you want a career (:

5. Banks Stuck Holding $12.5 Billion in Debt They Couldn’t Offload: To help Musk buy Twitter, banks loaned him $12.5 billion. Normally banks try to resell these loans to other investors (hedge funds, pensions funds) soon after the deal closes, so they don’t have to carry the risk. But because X’s outlook soured, no one wanted to buy the debt, leaving the banks “stuck” holding it on their balance sheets. Those banks have since offloaded nearly all of that debt, however.

Rate this newsletter: