AI Fuels M&A Machine

Good morning. The market is still waiting for AI frontier developers to go public. Imagine what the prospect for an IPO looks like if your company isn’t OpenAI or Anthropic.

As The Morning Download reported last week, U.S. venture dealmaking hit $515.8 billion through the third quarter of 2026, but exits remain stalled. The PitchBook NVCA Venture Monitor shows that just 18 companies went public in the third quarter, leaving 992 active unicorns and a backlog of IPOs with no clear path to liquidity.