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As the year comes to an end, may the Holiday Season bring you happiness and 2024 be filled with investing success. We will be back in January. Last week, the market looked past Wednesday’s sell-off and major indexes rose for an eighth straight week — Dow Jones rose 0.2%, S&P 500 was up 0.75%, Nasdaq gained 1.2%. Software startup ServiceTitan is preparing for 2024 IPO. Anthropic, is in talks to raise US$750 million in a venture round led by Menlo Ventures. OpenAI is in talks to raise new funding at a valuation of US$100 billion or more. ByteDance’s sales broke US$110 billion to pass Tencent in 2023. China’s iPhone ban accelerates across government and state firms. Adobe and Figma called off the US$20 billion acquisition of Figma by Adobe. Adobe now has US$6 billion for AI and buybacks after the deal collapsed. Cybersecurity firm Okta will buy startup Spera for a reported US$100 million. Shares of Micron gained about 6% in premarket trading Thursday, after the largest US maker of memory semiconductors indicated data center demand is compensating for a slowly recovering market for personal computers and smartphones. Apple is aiming to sell the Vision Pro in February, the company has also developed a breakthrough method for Running LLMs on iPhones. Google might already be replacing some Ad sales jobs with AI. Google will pay US$700 million to settle claims by a group of state attorneys general. BlackRock’s proposed bitcoin ETF will now allow cash redemptions after pushback from the SEC. In Canada, HIVE announced a $25 million bought deal. Sophic Client, Legend Power reported Q4 F2023 results, management is focused on advancing sales opportunities. Sophic Client, Kraken received a Synthetic Aperture Sonar Order from NATO CMRE. Sophic Client Ionik unveiled a fully rebranded website, taking another step in its brand evolution.

With the Fed possibly pivoting to rate cuts in 2024, Dow Jones hit an all-time high, S&P 500, Nasdaq composite, Russell 2000 and S&P MidCap 400 – all hit 52-week highs. For the week, Dow Jones was up 2.9%, S&P 500 gained 2.5%, and Nasdaq composite rose 2.85%. Publicly traded electronic signature company DocuSign is working with advisers to explore a sale, potentially setting up one of the largest leveraged buyouts in recent years. A private equity consortium led by Insight Partners and Clearlake Capital Group is in advanced talks to take data analytics software company, Alteryx private for around US$5 billion, including debt. Global Payments is considering an acquisition of US peer Shift4. TikTok and Indonesian internet firm GoTo, have announced a deal in which TikTok will acquire GoTo’s Tokopedia e-commerce subsidiary in Indonesia. Oracle stock dropped 8% on slower revenue growth. Adobe shares fell 6% after hours after the company issued a revenue projection for its new fiscal year that implied a smaller boost from its new artificial intelligence products than investors had been hoping. Etsy is laying off around 11% of employees, as the site struggles to grow sales amid fierce competition from bargain-priced sellers like Shein and Temu. Epic Games’ victory against Google has put Apple back under App Store pressure. In Canada, Sophic Client, Kraken maintained strong Q4 service utilization, with a record number of survey awards. Sophic Client, Xcyte Digital, hosted the Metaverse Spectrum and celebrated a successful business conference, expo, awards, and pitch fest, where 27 companies had the opportunity to pitch to a panel of judges and connect with over 120 investors. TMX Group, the owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, said on Wednesday it had acquired an around 78% stake in U.S. data analytics company VettaFi Holdings for US$848 million ($1.14 billion).

Last week, the market had modest gains, driven in the second half of the week. For the week, Dow Jones gained 2 points, S&P 500 index was up 0.2% and Nasdaq composite rose 0.7%. S&P 500 hit its 2023 high on Friday, and Nasdaq is coming up to that level. The market rally could be ready to run, but sentiment is already bullish. Out of 128 closely held companies that achieved valuations at or above US$1 billion as of 2021, nearly 90% were estimated to be valued lower in private trades, and about a third of the startups’ valuations in the group dropped below US$1 billion. SpaceX is discussing allowing a sale of company shares by employees and other investors at a valuation of US$175 billion or more, an increase of at least 17% over the last such offering. Fidelity and Jane Street backed CoreWeave at a US$7 billion valuation. CoreWeave, is a cloud computing provider that’s among the hottest startups in the artificial intelligence race. Elon Musk is looking to raise US$1 billion for xAI, his AI company. OpenAI rival, Mistral nears a US$2 billion valuation with Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and Salesforce backing. Google’s new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company’s tech or integrity after finding out that the most impressive demo of Gemini was pretty much faked. AMD holds launch event for AI chips that challenge Nvidia. AMD stock didn’t move on the news but is up 82% so far this year. Insiders sold or filed to sell about 370,000 shares last month. Moves come after the stock more than tripled in value in 2023. In Canada, there was news of a number of start ups securing funding, totalling ~$220 mln, well weekly 2020 and 2021 highs, but nonetheless encouraging for investors’ innovation risk appetite.

Last week, Dow Jones rose 2.4%, S&P 500 was up 0.8% and Nasdaq composite gained 0.4%. Dow Jones hit a 52-week high, S&P 500 set a 2023 closing high, with Nasdaq not far behind. Russell 2000 also finally rose above a key level. Reddit is again holding talks with potential investors for an IPO. Rubrik, a Microsoft Corp.-backed cloud and data security startup, is also considering an IPO as soon as Q1 2024. Kim Kardashian’s Skims, valued this summer at US$4 billion, is also discussing strategic options including an IPO. Shein confidentially filed for U.S. IPO. Lineage Logistics is targeting a valuation of more than US$30 billion in a large 2024 IPO. Tiger Global’s biggest venture fund has a 18% loss after markdowns. Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, quietly raised an additional US$43 million. OpenAI is not planning to give Microsoft, and other investors board seats. Blackstone will buy Pet-Care site Rover for US$2.3 billion. Snowflake reported revenue growth of 32% as its CEO hails ‘stabilizing’ software market. Salesforce revenue rose 11%, the company said customers are embracing a ‘new era’ of AI. Amazon has grabbed the crown of biggest delivery business in the U.S., surpassing both UPS and FedEx in parcel volumes. SoFi is shutting down its crypto business, even as MicroStrategy made its biggest bitcoin purchase in years. In Canada, Shopify merchants set a sales record over Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Open Text will sell the AMC business to Rocket Software for US$2.28 billion in cash. Constellation Software was mentioned in the Economist magazine, it is now Canada’s second largest tech firm. Will it lead to the magazine curse? Sophic Clients, Kraken, Ionik, UGE, Clear Blue and Renoworks reported financials last week. New institutional investors appear to be accumulating Kraken based on recent trades, as the Company is hitting an inflection point.