🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2025-03-04

Here's my take on the rise of vertical M&A and the new normal of AI funding.

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Two hot takes on two stories that caught my eye on Tuesday.

🤖 + 💰 I expect to see more vertical M&A combinations in 2025 that create defensive moats and offensive bundles as the next mega rounds of investments are weighed against deploying capital for increasingly competitive buys.

Techmeme: CoreWeave acquires Weights & Biases, whose tools help developers build AI apps, sources say for ~$1.7B; Weights & Biases was valued at $1.25B in August 2023 (The Information)

From The Information. View the full context on Techmeme.

🤖 + 💰 Even a number like $3.5B is starting to sound normal in the ever shifting Overton window of AI related funding routs.