Deal trackers at PwC counted 47 megadeals worth $5 billion or more through the first nine months of 2025, alongside another 144 transactions in the $1 billion to $5 billion range. That pace would push 2025 roughly 31% above 2024 by megadeal volume and make it the strongest year for large deals since 2021.

Numbers that large rarely stay contained at the top of the market. JP Conte, managing partner of the family office Lupine Crest Capital, treats the megadeal surge less as a headline and more as a signal about what reaches the middle market next.

A Market Bunched Around One Theme

Roughly a quarter of the $5 billion-plus deals PwC tracked carry an artificial intelligence label. The theme spans data center build-outs, AI-related electricity demand, and AI tools folded into an acquirer’s existing products. Single-theme concentration at that level has not appeared in a decade.

Big Tech acquihires sit outside the official count, which means the real flow of AI money runs larger than the headline tally suggests. Minority stakes and talent grabs designed to sidestep antitrust review never show up as completed megadeals, yet they pull capital and operators out of the same pool.

What Conte Watches Below the Headlines

Corporate buyers took most 2025 private equity exits. They paid up for recurring-revenue, data-rich businesses in cybersecurity, enterprise software, and payments. That buyer behavior drains the upper tier and leaves a wake of divestitures and carve-outs further down.

Lupine Crest works the $50 million to $500 million revenue band, the envelope where those spillovers tend to settle. JP Conte’s read is straightforward: a crowded top accelerates the timetable for everyone, and patient capital gets first look at assets sold for liquidity rather than for a fund-stage exit.

Why the Signal Favors Patient Money

A megadeal-heavy year sharpens pressure on sponsors holding aging portfolios, which sends more middle-market assets to auction over the following 12 to 18 months. Bain & Company’s 2026 report, Outlook: Gaining Traction, describes a recovery built on a narrow band of very large transactions.

Conte’s seat lets him wait out that narrow recovery. A balance-sheet buyer with no redemption clock can price against a seller’s need to move rather than a rival’s appetite for risk, which is exactly the position the 2025 data hands to family offices like Lupine Crest.