Artificial Intelligencer: Trump, AI powering a dealmaking boom

Globalstar

15/04/2026 20:56

By Jeffrey Dastin

April 15 (Reuters) - The same day Anthropic sued the Trump administration for blacklisting its technology, the artificial intelligence lab pursued a charm offensive out of public view.

Newly disclosed lobbying records show that on March 9, Ballard Partners began making the case for Anthropic “regarding DOW procurement,” referring to the Department of War, the Trump administration’s renamed Pentagon. Ballard Partners pitched the Executive Office of the President, earning $130,000 for its work, the filings show.

Days earlier, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had refused to back down on red lines over AI’s military use. He declined in a leaked internal memo to give “dictator-style praise to Trump,” a gaffe for which Amodei quickly apologized. The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it wouldn’t let a private-sector executive govern U.S. defense.

But far from taking a bare-knuckle approach, Anthropic wanted to get down to business. It had retained several firms during its months-long Pentagon talks, among them a Ballard lobbyist who recently left the Trump White House and State Department.

So while Anthropic’s litigation plays out in court, behind the scenes, it has the former firm of Susie Wiles, now White House chief of staff, working to make amends.

Read more on how businesses are dealmaking in the Trump era, below.

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THE TRUMP DEALMAKING BOOM IS HERE

United Airlines’ UAL.O chief pitched President Donald Trump on a merger with its rival, American Airlines AAL.O.

Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said he was open-minded about Amazon.com’s AMZN.O $11.6 billion deal for Globalstar GSAT.O.

And Anthropic, about a month after getting the boot from Trump on Truth Social, is in talks with the administration about its bug-finding Mythos AI.

The Trump dealmaking boom has arrived.

After Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs roiled markets in 2025 and slowed down M&A, megadeals are now flourishing, as expected from an administration perceived as less hawkish than former President Joe Biden on antitrust.

Data from LSEG shows the value of announced transactions hit a five-year high in the first quarter, even as the number of deals fell by 17% from a year prior.

Powering the boom are AI and Big Tech.

Chatbot darlings OpenAI and Anthropic brought in an eye-watering $110 billion and $30 billion in funding, respectively. SpaceX is pushing for a $1.75 trillion valuation ahead of what could be the largest IPO in history. Investors poured $300 billion into some 6,000 startups overall in the quarter, up about 150% from the year prior, according to Crunchbase data.

A closer look shows the money isn’t spread evenly. PitchBook executive Nizar Tarhuni said in a Tuesday statement, “Concentration has increasingly defined VC over the past couple years, but Q1 marked a new extreme.”

That’s geographic, too. California dwarfed every other U.S. state with nearly $228 billion in venture capital invested in the first quarter across 954 deals, according to PitchBook data.

But geopolitics are not stopping the action.

“People aren't waiting for things to get better,” Sam Kim, global head of M&A at Deutsche Bank, told my colleagues earlier this month. “They are recognising ​that volatility is just part of life and they are working within that construct.”

In the first three months of 2026, there were more than 11,000 deals globally valued at $1.2 trillion, according to LSEG data. Forty of these were $5 billion apiece or more, such as Waymo’s $16 billion February fundraise.

Amazon’s bid for Globalstar, announced Tuesday, is a more recent example. The company’s goal to challenge SpaceX in satellite connectivity led it to the second-highest price tag for any planned acquisition in the cloud and e-commerce company’s more than three-decade history, after its 2017 deal for Whole Foods.

For AI companies, the signal is that the Trump administration is open for business.

Anthropic may be blacklisted by the Pentagon, but its tech is still the talk of the town. Just ask leadership at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.

CHART OF THE WEEK:

Move over, Google.

For the first time, Meta Platforms META.O may overtake Alphabet GOOGL.O as the world’s biggest player in online advertising, with an expected $243 billion in digital ad revenue, less traffic acquisition costs. The forecast, by internet research firm Emarketer, puts the Google and YouTube parent at about $240 billion this year.

Meta’s business tools are paying off across Facebook and Instagram, said Emarketer analyst Zach Goldner in a press release. He said, “Advertisers are getting better bang for their buck.”

Meta will eclipse Google in digital ad revenue, Emarketer says https://www.reuters.com/graphics/META-ADREV/dwpkyleyjpm/chart.png

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Kenneth Li and Lisa Shumaker)

(( jeffrey.dastin@thomsonreuters.com ))