This column is a look back at the week that was in AI. Read the previous one here.
Dealmaking involving venture-backed startups is up slightly year to year overall, and part of that uptick is thanks to artificial intelligence.
In Q1, 81 deals involving AI startups were consummated, per Crunchbase data.
That number is nearly a 33% increase from both Q1 and Q4 2024 — both of which saw 61 M&A deals.
The Q1 numbers included some big deals. ServiceNow bought Moveworks, provider of an enterprise AI assistant platform, for $2.85 billion in cash and stock, and Nvidia-backed CoreWeave — which also went public last quarter — acquired AI developer platform Weights & Biases for a whopping $1.7 billion.
In February, Metaphysic, which specializes in AI-generated, photorealistic content for entertainment, bought AI and content technology company Brahma for $1.4 billion, bringing the total number of M&A deals worth $1 billion or more to three.
There has also been talk of more — bigger — deals. OpenAI has discussed acquiring Sam Altman’s and ex-Apple designer Jony Ive’s AI-powered personal device, per a report in The Information. That deal likely would have a lot of zeroes attached to it considering the parties involved.
Of course, Q1 numbers came before the escalation of a trade war thanks to increasing tariffs and the very real threat of an economic stand-off between the U.S. and China. Those moves promise to snarl the supply chain and could affect the AI industry greatly as chips and energy are ensnared in the power struggle.
Nevertheless, in a world where investors are desperate for liquidity-producing exits, the overall M&A increase and specifically for AI startups is likely welcome news.
Other things that caught our eye
While it has been talked about for a couple of months, somewhat quietly over the weekend it seems like AI research lab Safe Superintelligence’s big $2 billion raise became all but official. (It actually may be official as the company is somewhat secretive.) It was reported Saturday that SSI had raised a $2 billion round led by Greenoaks Capital Partners at a $32 billion valuation.
The raise is the second large one for the startup — co-founded by OpenAI‘s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever — in seven months. The startup, which is looking to develop safe artificial intelligence systems, raised a $1 billion round from a litany of big-name investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital last September. That round valued the company at $5 billion, per Reuters.
The company isn’t generating revenue and doesn’t even intend to sell an AI product anytime in the near future — but it still saw its valuation jump more than sixfold in fewer than seven months?
That’s AI.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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