AI’s dealmaking frenzy

Hi! Katie here. I’m excited to lead my first edition of VC Insider (taking turns with Ben!) This week, I’m digging into the extraordinary boom in startup acquisitions and why the deals keep getting bigger.

I’ve been covering venture-backed deals for 13 years, and we’re in an M&A environment unlike I’ve ever experienced.

We’re seeing some of the biggest deals on record, including SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor. (OK, technically, the $250 billion Elon-Elon SpaceX/xAI deal was bigger.) And billion-dollar venture-backed acquisitions are at their highest level since 2021, according to Crunchbase.

The year kicked off with Capital One’s $5 billion-plus deal for Brex, but the real frenzy began after SpaceX’s Cursor acquisition in June. Most of the action since has been in AI. We were first to report that Hugging Face was attracting takeover interest,…