Global merger-and-acquisition activity has reached $2.6 trillion for the first seven months of 2025, the strongest start to a year since the 2021 post-pandemic peak, Dealogic data cited by Reuters show. The value of deals is 28 percent higher than the same period a year ago even though the number of transactions is 16 percent lower, underscoring a shift toward fewer but significantly larger transactions. Artificial-intelligence ambitions are driving much of the upswing. In the United States—still accounting for more than half of global deal value—megadeals worth more than $10 billion include Union Pacific’s proposed $85 billion takeover of Norfolk Southern and OpenAI’s planned $40 billion capital raise led by SoftBank. Bankers say boardrooms see AI as a growth imperative and are willing to pay up before competitors lock in scarce assets and talent. Venture financing is echoing the same theme. OpenAI, now reporting about 700 million users, has raised an additional $8.3 billion at a valuation near $300 billion, while one-year-old Reflection AI—founded by former DeepMind researchers—has secured the bulk of a funding round exceeding $1 billion to build open-source large-language models that would compete with offerings from Meta and others. Capital commitments extend well beyond Silicon Valley. Abu Dhabi-based MGX is considering raising several billion dollars for an AI-focused investment fund, and data from SwissCognitive indicate Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet together have already spent roughly $155 billion on AI this year, with industry forecasts pointing to $400 billion in related capital expenditure during 2026. Advisers at EY and Clifford Chance expect the deal momentum to persist through the second half as companies prioritise scale, data-centre capacity and algorithmic capabilities, suggesting that AI’s influence on corporate finance is still in its early innings despite macroeconomic uncertainty and newly imposed U.S. tariffs.