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Mapping the AI supercycle: Hyperscaler capex is hurtling toward $1 trillion by 2028, and the fundamental unit of economic production is shifting with it. Our research introduces a 25-layer AI technology investment stack to help investors navigate this historic pivot by determining where moats are forming, parsing geopolitical risks and identifying potential market leaders. Dive in.
Tech research: Check out our reports on VC and market trends across fintech, biopharma and healthtech.
Country market snapshots: Read about macroeconomic and microeconomic trends in Sweden, Italy, Germany, France and the UK. |
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| A message from Apollo Global Management |
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| Think capital solutions new |
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Over the next decade, over $75 trillion is needed to modernize US industries. Apollo is stepping up with long-duration capital to power infrastructure, energy and technology for America’s next chapter.
Learn More |
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| Global M&A just had its loudest quarter on record |
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Q1 2026 delivered a historic surge in dealmaking, with total transaction value hitting $1.6 trillion—a new all-time high—even as geopolitical and macroeconomic pressures mounted.
Global M&A value climbed 8.8% quarter-over-quarter and a remarkable 50.6% year-over-year, marking the strongest single quarter in PitchBook's data series. Deal count reached an estimated 13,877 transactions, up 18.3% year-over-year and matching the record set in Q4 2025. This trend underscores that the surge wasn't just a megadeal mirage.
But the headline figures carry an important caveat: xAI's $250 billion acquisition by SpaceX, which is the single largest deal ever recorded. When we strip out that deal, the quarter's deal value is around 8% below Q4 2025, which would still represent a remarkable quarter for M&A activity.
North American M&A activity posted a historic quarter, demonstrating strength even after excluding the xAI transaction, as dealmakers navigated geopolitical risk, AI disruption, and a rising forward rate curve.
Cross-border flows tilted decisively toward Europe in Q1. Cheaper euro-denominated financing and compressed European target valuations are pulling dollar-funded buyers across the pond, even as the euro strengthened for much of the quarter. North American acquirers deployed $117.5 billion into European targets, compared with $100 billion flowing in the other direction.
As for the sectors that capital is flowing into, the two to highlight are energy and B2C, reflecting a rotation in investor priorities toward energy security and premium consumer platforms. Energy's deal value reached the highest estimated total since Q4 2023, and B2C's deal value jumped 37.6% QoQ.
The headline figures for IT were strong but inflated—again, you guessed it—by the xAI transaction. The sector was propelled to its highest quarterly value on record, an estimated $409.5 billion, but without the $250 billion xAI-SpaceX merger, IT deal value actually fell 52.5% quarter-over-quarter.
Even so, the quarter's activity is still healthy, especially given concerns about AI disruption and compressed software valuations, but we may see a more pronounced pullback in dealmaking reflected in Q2 numbers.
For more data and analysis on the current drivers of the M&A market, download our Q1 2026 Global M&A Report.
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| AI is already the doctor—now the $5.9T question is who pays |
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Physician AI adoption has crossed the mainstream threshold—and according to our new research, the resulting wave of induced demand could add a cumulative $5.9 trillion in excess medical costs by the late 2030s before long-term savings materialize.
Eighty-one percent of US physicians now use AI in their practices, more than double the 38% reported just three years ago, according to the American Medical Association's 2026 Physician Survey.
On the consumer side, 79% of US adults search online for health answers, and a majority consider AI-generated health information at least somewhat reliable. These tools are already embedded in clinical workflows from documentation to triage to diagnostic reasoning.
Our central economic thesis is that AI will make healthcare more expensive before it makes it cheaper.
As near-zero-cost AI diagnosis surfaces previously undetected conditions, it generates downstream utilization—confirmatory visits, specialist referrals, imaging and treatment—on existing high-cost infrastructure.
We estimate the physician "cognitive premium," the share of national health expenditure attributable to physician knowledge and judgment, will rise from roughly 15% to as high as 21% of NHE during this induced demand phase before compressing as AI absorbs cognitive work.
We see administrative automation as the critical bridge to finance higher utilization. With roughly $317 billion in annual administrative spend that is almost entirely automatable by current AI technology, holding admin costs flat or reducing them 10% annually could pull cumulative break-even forward by five to seven years, making the overall AI investment fiscally viable within a policy-relevant scoring window.
On the delivery side, a new generation of AI-native care models is scaling rapidly. Doctronic, highlighted as providing the strongest consumer experience, grew from zero to eight-figure annualized revenue and over 15 million medical conversations in under two years. Amazon Health AI expanded its AI assistant to 200 million Prime members in March 2026. Meanwhile, CMS's new ACCESS payment model sets reimbursement rates that, by design, we see as a signal and an intentional policy test case.
The competitive landscape spans a five-layer stack from foundation models through care orchestration to direct delivery, with early moats forming around data liquidity and multimodal ingestion.
Companies that win in the long term will be those that prove AI actually improved a patient's health, not just that it processed a claim faster. |
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Have a great weekend,
Brian Wright
Lead Research Analyst, Healthcare |
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OpenAI: The IPO That Cannot Afford to Wait
Execution gaps, governance turbulence and legal exposure make a 2026 IPO increasingly unlikely for OpenAI. This analyst note covers the cost architecture behind the $1.15 trillion obligation stack and how the above is going to affect OpenAI's IPO.
It also breaks down the structural tension at the center of the most anticipated public offering in tech history. A company that needs permanent capital at a scale private markets can no longer absorb is racing toward a listing it may not be operationally or legally prepared to execute. |
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On the other side of this market, Anthropic is targeting an October Nasdaq listing with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan as lead underwriters, a raise expected to exceed $60 billion. Whichever company gets there first captures the institutional allocation. OpenAI knows this.
The IPO that cannot afford to wait may also be the one least prepared to go.
Download the report |
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| May 28: In this webinar, which has been rescheduled from May 4, experts from PitchBook, NVCA, J.P. Morgan, Dentons, and EisnerAmper will share insights from the Q1 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Register here. |
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Our insights and data featured in the press:
• xAI, established in 2023, raised about $12 billion by March 2025. [The New York Times]
• Despite a recent "feeding frenzy," analyst Ben Zercher says he expects in vivo CAR-T dealmaking to slow because of a shortage o | | | | | | |
