00:00I feel like every day there is some new sort of deal, whether it be the one Scarlett discussed
00:04in chips or whether it be power to power AI. Tami, I'd love to start with you and just get
00:10an idea of what the pipeline looks like and what areas around AI are you mostly seeing some of
00:14these deals crop up? Well, first of all, Danny, it's great to be here. So thanks for having me.
00:19It's very busy out there. And I'd say in my 27 years of investment banking,
00:25it's never been more busy and it's never been more fun for starters. And I'd say
00:28AI is creating massive technology shifts. And as which always happens with big technology shifts,
00:36there's lots of CapEx. There is lots of value creation, as we've seen here.
00:41There's industry transformation and all of this tends to drive strategic activity. And so there
00:47is quite a bit of deal activity out there, both on the M&A side, which we've been seeing. And
00:52I'd say
00:52you are starting to see some of the mega mergers. We obviously saw that in the utility space
00:56with NextEra and Dominion. But I'd say in and around technology and in particular around
01:01semiconductors, it's been pretty active. But what we've been seeing a lot of is really a lot more
01:06private companies being picked up by larger companies. And it's companies that fill in key
01:12technology holes. If we saw yesterday, ADI picked up a power company. We've been seeing a lot of activity
01:19in and around the interconnect space and companies trying to really position their portfolios
01:24for differentiation. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that continuing.
01:28And mind you, they're private companies. They're not necessarily small deals. These are big deals.
01:32But I also think you've got such extraordinary valuation of some of these bigger companies
01:37created, quite frankly, also by really healthy profits that I wouldn't be surprised to see some
01:43bigger deals also coming down the pipeline.
01:45I mean, Wally, what say you? Bigger deals and especially, as Tammy was mentioning, more
01:49among the private companies?
01:50I think the deal activity is going to span the full spectrum, private and public. If I zoom back
01:55one giant step, we are at the very early innings of AI. And in particular, the very early innings
02:02of an AI data center build out. And it's not just about the chips. The chips get a lot of
02:08the attention.
02:09And rightfully so. These things are scientific marvels. They're amazing things. But I think there's
02:14a lot of value that is to be had through all of the infrastructure that supports those chips from
02:22the networking to the memory to the power and the cooling and even the real estate. All of those
02:28things are critical to delivering the AI, which I think is going to drive a lot of strategic activity.
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