Record-breaking private company M&A

The most interesting trend in today's M&A landscape is...

The explosive growth of private-to-private (mega) acquisitions. OpenAI's $6.4B acquisition of Jony Ive's io is the largest private-to-private acquisition of all-time by a cool $2.5B over second place.

Over 40% (7) $1B+ private-to-private acquisitions have happened in the last year. OpenAI, Databricks, and Stripe have each spent over 15% of their total funding to date on acquisitions in the last two years. 

The latest data adds context to several hypotheses floating around social channels and investor circles:

1) The biggest private companies are *happily* operating at public company scale 

2) AI is driving mega M&A deals in a mad dash for tech moats and full-stack offerings

3) AI talent wars are fueling the world's most expensive hiring strategy

4) Private-to-private M&A is increasing

What's next? Or for a more pointed/predictive version of the question...

Who is Anthropic going to acquire*?

*Acquisition matrix incoming