• AI also carried the day from a public markets perspective, with CoreWeave, an AI cloud provider, staking claim to the biggest tech IPO since 2021. Globally, the IPO market posted gains in both volume and value, according to EY data, with IPO value up 20% year-over-year.
• In Private Equity, Sycamore Partners’ take-private of Walgreens Boots Alliance accounted for more than 9% of Q1’s total deal value. It was the largest take-private in the last two years, according to Pitchbook data, and may be a indicator of things to come: a depressed public market, combined with better credit conditions and PE’s dry powder has the potential to create an active take-private market.
• Venture Capital was even more top-heavy. Though headlines abound about AI investments, they still comprise just 28% of VC deals globally and 33% of VC deals in the US. While that share of deal count remains surprisingly small given the headlines, the share of deal value does not: AI investments make up nearly 58% of deal value globally and, in the US specifically, that figure is more than 71%.

• Public company openings dropped 1% in Q1 but closed searches fell 9%, keeping fairly in line with the S&P’s -4% quarter and the Nasdaq’s -10% quarter.
• Newly opened searches in Private Equity jumped 20% quarter-over-quarter, with nearly all of those gains coming from in the form of CEO and Finance recruiting.
• Venture Capital saw a more modest 5% QoQ increase in opened searches, but notably saw stronger 9% QoQ growth at Seed/Series A (which, according to Pitchbook data, saw 10%+ increases median deal values).

About the Report

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Function Breakdown