Global dealmaking topped $3.2 trillion in the first half of 2026, the largest six-month total in at least a decade, as the AI economy pushed corporate giants into a wave of transformational mergers while smaller companies retreated to the sidelines.
The figure represents a 45% jump from the same period a year earlier, according to Dealogic. Yet the boom is narrow: the total number of deals fell about 1%, meaning a handful of blockbuster transactions did most of the heavy lifting.
Big Deals, Fewer Deals
Forty-four transactions larger than $10 billion were announced through June, including takeovers and major private-market fundraisings. Those mega-deals inflated overall value even as transaction count slipped to 21,727 from 21,997 a year earlier. Companies with thinner balance sheets or greater exposure to geopolitical risk largely stayed out of the market.
Executives at the largest firms have brushed aside tariffs and Middle East conflict to pursue takeovers they believe will clear regulators under the Trump administration. Many “perceive they have a window in which to attempt to affect something transformational, and now is really the time to try to do it,” said Matt McClure, global co-head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs.
Scale Keeps Moving
The drive to get bigger is being shaped by an economy increasingly dominated by a handful of giant corporations. Companies now need to be roughly twice as large to enter the S&P 500 as they did five years ago. Exxon Mobil, once the most valuable U.S. company, is about one-eighth the size of the largest of the Magnificent Seven technology firms.
“The definition of scale keeps moving, so companies need to be bigger and bigger, and big companies need to do bigger and bigger deals to have an impact,” said Ben Wilson, co-head of North America mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan.
Two deals illustrate the AI economy’s pull. NextEra’s $118 billion acquisition of Dominion Energy, announced in May, would create a utility giant built to supply the surging electricity demand from AI data centers. SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, a code-writing software start-up, is aimed at helping Elon Musk’s rocket company build its AI models.
Counterintuitive Boom
What makes the current dealmaking boom unusual is that it is unfolding against a backdrop of significant volatility. Oil supply disruptions tied to the war with Iran and strained trade relations with Europe show no sign of easing. Questions also persist around the AI build-out itself — chip costs, supply constraints, and uncertainty over when AI companies will actually turn a profit.
“What makes the current boom a little counterintuitive is it appears to be associated with maybe not unprecedented, but top-quartile-level uncertainty and volatility,” said Jonathan Knee, a Columbia Business School professor and senior adviser at Evercore.
Bankers argue this cycle differs from past frenzies — the low-interest dealmaking of the COVID era, the leveraged buyouts of 2007, or the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. The companies driving the surge are among the world’s largest and best-funded, pursuing big mergers rather than stringing together smaller acquisitions.
Private Equity Falls Behind
Not every sector is joining the party. Private equity firms accounted for 24% of overall deal value, down from roughly 34% in 2024 through 2025, according to Dealogic. Many of these firms are struggling to value the software companies they acquired before AI emerged as a competitive threat, making those assets difficult to sell.
“So far this year, it’s just not been quite at the pace the market originally anticipated,” McClure said of the private equity environment.
IPO Market Roars Back
Initial public offerings in the first half were dominated by large companies tied to AI and defense technology. U.S. IPOs raised $155 billion, the most since 2021’s wave of blank-check vehicles. SpaceX raised more than $75 billion in the largest IPO on record. Cerebras, a Silicon Valley AI chipmaker, raised $5.55 billion, while Madison Air Solutions, a data-center cooling company, raised $2.23 billion.
The pipeline remains open. SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chipmaker, is set to raise $28 billion in a U.S. listing this week.
But the first weeks of SpaceX trading have been choppy. Priced at $135 a share, the stock opened at $150 on June 12, closed just above $135 on Wednesday, and slipped below $133 on Thursday — a reminder that even the most hyped AI economy offerings face market gravity.
What Happens Next
The dealmaking boom has been a windfall for banks. Bank of America expects investment banking revenue up 28% year over year in the latest quarter, while JPMorgan Chase expects a 10% increase, according to Jefferies. Earnings details next week will reveal how durable that tailwind is.
The deeper question is whether AI spending will justify itself. Shares of the Magnificent Seven led the S&P 500 to its best second quarter in six years, even as those same stocks fell roughly 9% in June. Inflation, Middle East conflict, and chip supply constraints remain live risks. Still, bankers expect the AI economy to keep driving activity. “I do think the AI theme will continue to drive activity through the end of the year,” one senior banker said.
Watch for three signals in the months ahead: whether SK Hynix’s listing holds its pricing, whether private equity can clear its backlog of software assets, and whether any of the 44 mega-deals announced this year run into regulatory or financing trouble. If those dominoes stay upright, the second half could match the first. If not, the narrowness of this boom — big deals, fewer deals — will become its vulnerability.
— Maya Chen, business desk, AXO News