Eye On AI: Dealmaking Takes Off

This column is a look back at the week that was in AI. Read the previous one here.

For the past few years, venture capitalists have bemoaned a lack of liquidity in the industry as the IPO pipeline froze and M&A dealmaking slowed.

Well, the IPO pipeline is still fairly chilled, but if the past few weeks are any indication, dealmaking when it comes to AI-related startups may be about to take off.

So far this first quarter, 65 venture-backed AI-related startups have been acquired, per Crunchbase data. That’s already more than Q4 and Q1 of last year. It’s possible it’ll hit the 76 deals that 2024’s Q2 and Q3 saw on average.

However, what was most telling isn’t the number of deals, but the amount of cash in them (let’s face it, that’s what matters).

Big deal

Of course, the big deal came down last week, when ServiceNow announced it’s buying Moveworks, provider of an enterprise AI assistant platform, for $2.85 billion in cash and stock (you can check out the biggest winners on that deal here.)

That was the largest deal involving an AI-related startup since the start of last year — but that was far from all.

The week before, Nvidia-backed CoreWeave acquired AI developer platform Weights & Biases for a whopping $1.7 billion — the third-largest deal since the beginning of 2024. Last month, Metaphysic, which specializes in AI-generated, photorealistic content for entertainment, bought AI and content technology company Brahma for $1.4 billion. That was the fourth-largest deal since the start of last year involving an AI firm.

Other deals such as UiPath buying agentic AI startup Peak. ai also received plenty of headlines, but no deal value was announced.

Nevertheless, in deals where terms were announced, nearly $7.4 billion has changed hands. That’s more than a massive 1,750% increase from the $377 million in deals from Q1 2024, and a nearly 400% jump in dollars from the $1.5 billion in deals in Q4.

More to come?

To be fair, Q3 last year did see $4 billion in deals (where terms were disclosed) involving AI-related startups, but nevertheless, Q1 already is a great quarter for VCs trying to find liquidity.

A tech M&A banker told me recently that the stock market uncertainty has cooled some of the earlier predictions that dealmaking will have a big comeback this year. He said “incremental growth” is expected, but perhaps not the outpouring of cash some expected.

AI dealmaking could be even trickier, as the rapid acceleration of the sector makes it hard to focus on targets or a specific AI tech, he added.

Well, it seems like some buyers are ready to jump in — and go big.