🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Megadeals are lifting global M&A totals while overall activity stays soft

• PwC describes a more polarised, “K-shaped” market where headline value keeps piling into the biggest transactions 1.
• Worldwide, deal values rose 36% in 2025 while deal counts increased 1% 1.
• In the US, EY reports transactions worth US$100 million or more jumped 224% year over year in February 2026, while the number of deals fell 9% 2.
• PwC links many top-end technology deals to AI. Nearly all of the largest technology transactions announced in 2025 mentioned AI as part of the deal rationale, including Google’s US$30 billion acquisition of Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity company 1.

AI is widening M&A beyond tech buyouts and into cross-industry expansion

• PwC expects AI to speed up “sector convergence,” with firms stepping into one another’s markets as industry lines blur and deal patterns shift 1.
• PwC finds industrial and healthcare buyers are picking up data, analytics, and software skills to put AI into operations plus research and development 1.
• Bain ties the 2025 bounce back to companies remaking themselves amid technology disruption and changing profit pools 3.
• PwC links AI readiness to valuation. General partners, the senior investment leaders at private equity firms, say investment committees now spend 30–40% of their time judging whether portfolio companies can use AI or risk disruption 1.