Markets

The most important headline: deal value in the first half of 2026 already equaled the total deal value for 2025.

For several years, healthcare private equity has favored buyers. That advantage may now be shifting back toward sellers.

Following a challenged second quarter, the direction of credit secondaries is now clear: they are becoming a larger, and more strategically important part of private markets.

When software stocks sold off sharply in the spring of 2026, the prevailing narrative was stark. AI would let customers build their own tools and let new entrants displace incumbents, leaving established software businesses with a shrinking future. The episode quickly became known as the “SaaSpocalypse.”

For much of the past decade, progress in quantum computing was described in the language of physics: qubit counts, fidelities and coherence times. That vocabulary is giving way to one any infrastructure investor would recognize. Cost per operation, energy, floor space and customer return now set the terms, and the companies best placed for the sector’s next phase are already building around them.

Defense has long been one of the hardest industries to enter, with decades-long programs, government customers and high technical barriers. Yet the past four years have produced a wave of new European companies winning contracts and capital at a pace few expected. This shift rests on lasting changes in how wars are fought, how equipment is built and how nations think about their own security.

The first wave of enterprise AI was driven by curiosity. Companies experimented, ran pilots and tested what large language models could do. The industry is now shifting to a more demanding phase. Buyers now want measurable returns, finance teams are scrutinizing compute bills, and the businesses gaining ground are those that can show value at a sustainable cost.

European startups raised $42 billion in the first half of 2026, up 50 percent from a year earlier and the strongest stretch for venture funding in four years.[1] The number matters less than what sits behind it: a change in ambition.

Learn where the next wave of investment opportunities are emerging and how Jefferies is helping connect companies and capital across the corridor.