Markets

Omer Ismail joined Jefferies at the Private Growth Conference in Santa Monica, where he described the conference as “a great opportunity to network with other builders, hearing their stories, exchanging ideas, talking about trends in AI and the marketplace.” He sat down to discuss OnePay’s strategy, its use of AI, and why he thinks the next era of US fintech belongs to platforms. 

Evans sat down at the Jefferies Private Growth Conference in Santa Monica, where he described the event as “speed dating at its most efficient — exactly who we are as a productivity company,” to talk about context, consolidation, and what it takes to build a company that outlasts its founder. 

On the data point that seed stage deal volume was down 25% in Q1, Acharya pushed back entirely. “That doesn’t match my experience at all. There are more people trying new things than ever before because the cost of trying has gotten so low. We’re seeing more seed deals than ever before.”

The European private markets landscape — and GP-led secondaries market in particular — is increasingly central to the global conversation around capital allocation. Its combination of institutional scale, growing liquidity, and depth of high-quality assets is shaping how capital is deployed worldwide like never before. Consider that Europe is now home to approximately 8,000 of […]

After years of false starts, the IPO market feels like it is approaching a genuine inflection point. The consensus among bankers and investors at this year’s conference was notably more optimistic than the macro backdrop might suggest. That optimism has since found its first proof point: shares in chipmaker Cerebras Systems more than doubled on its market debut after raising $5.5 billion, the largest IPO of the year, confirming that investor appetite for the right AI story is very much alive. 

With volatile front-end oil prices, an escalating conflict in the Middle East, and a closing window on favorable antitrust conditions, the upstream energy market is navigating a complex set of conditions heading into the second half of 2026. Yet dealmaking has not slowed. If anything, it has accelerated.

While volatile oil prices have introduced uncertainty across the energy sector, midstream is experiencing something closer to the opposite effect. The geopolitical disruptions reshaping global supply have reinforced one fundamental truth for midstream operators: volumes are coming. The question is no longer whether production will be drilled, but when and that shift in certainty is driving a meaningful acceleration in midstream deal activity. 

The IPO market has reopened to the industry, and private equity is playing an increasingly important role. Meanwhile, the defense sector, as reflected by the ITA ETF, returned more than 38% so far this year, far outpacing the S&P 500.

What analysts came to call the “SaaSpocalypse,” a months-long compression of software valuations driven by existential fears about artificial intelligence, shook the confidence of executives and investors who had long treated the dominance of enterprise software as a given.