November 20, 2025

Checking out

Hi there,

Here is this week's Hot or Not.

Hot: AI agent market explosion

The AI agent market has exploded into 1,500+ players.

1 in 5 new unicorns ($1B+ valuation) are now developing agents, while agentic startups have become leading acquisition targets for enterprise software incumbents.

Check out our AI agent market map to see 400+ promising private companies across core enterprise use cases and industry applications.

Not: Volatile crypto

In October, over 15 companies across the stablecoin infrastructure stack raised early-stage capital.

Investors like Thrive Capital and Sequoia bet $500M on Tempo, a Layer-1 blockchain for stablecoin payments developed by Stripe and Paradigm, at a $5B valuation.

Meanwhile, middleware players Tesser ($4.5M seed round) and Cybrid ($10M Series A) are building APIs for banks to integrate stablecoin rails.

See October's Early-Stage Trends Report to learn more about what's next in tech based on our analysis of 1,350+ pre-seed to Series A deals.

Hot: Surgical robots

AI and computer vision are making surgical robots more precise and safer to use across a wide range of procedures.

As these technologies mature, incumbents are responding through acquisitions and investments:

Johnson & Johnson just led a $67M Series D for China-based Ronovo Surgical while securing distribution rights
Intuitive announced plans to acquire distribution operations across Europe

Specialized systems are leading targets based on CB Insights M&A probability scores: Think Surgical targets joint replacements, iotaMotion handles hearing implants, and Medical Micro Instruments pioneered reconstructive microsurgery.

See CB Insights' analysis of 40+ surgical robotics companies to identify the top 6 M&A targets.

Not: Shopping alone

AI agents are poised to become your personal shopper, and tech leaders & retailers are racing to make it happen:

Perplexity's Buy with Pro and OpenAI's Instant Checkout let users research and buy directly within their AI search platforms
Shopify and Walmart are integrating their catalogs into ChatGPT
PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard are building the rails for autonomous payments

See how AI agents are reshaping every stage of the customer journey in CB Insights' agentic commerce market map.

The +1

Book smarts? Sometimes, you should judge a book by its cover.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Did you miss our briefing on real-world use cases of AI agents in action? Download the recording to learn about agents driving ROI.

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