The AI primary market is "in full swing", and OpenAI's stock has been snapped up. On Monday, there were three mergers and acquisitions in one day, and Reuters also made a move

Author: Bu Shuqing

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

Against the backdrop of the boom in artificial intelligence, the hustle and bustle of the secondary market is subsiding, but the primary market is setting off a wave of panic buying.

Hot AI start-ups such as OpenAI were snapped up by investors. On Monday alone, three M&A deals were concluded, the news giant Reuters ended, and even the largest acquisition in the field of AIGC (generative artificial intelligence) appeared.

Three mergers and acquisitions a day, the largest acquisition in the AIGC field is finalized

On June 26, local time, Thomson Reuters (Thomson Reuters) announced the acquisition of AI legal startup Casetext for $650 million, and said it would complement its existing artificial intelligence program.

“The acquisition of Casetext is another step in our ‘build, partner and acquire’ strategy to bring AIGC solutions to our clients,” said Steve Hasker, president and CEO of Thomson Reuters, in a press release. “We believe in Casetext will accelerate and expand the market potential of our products - revolutionizing the way professionals work and the jobs they do.”

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of this year.

Founded in 2008, Thomson Reuters is a business and professional intelligence information provider formed by the merger of The Thomson Corporation of Canada and Reuters Group PLC of the United Kingdom. Its business segments include news agency Reuters and legal research Platform Westlaw.

Founded in 2013, Casetext uses AI and machine learning to provide technical services to legal professionals. According to the statement, the company has obtained the right to use OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, and its recently launched AI legal assistant CoCounsel is also powered by GPT-4.

On the same day, two other acquisitions of AI companies were closed.

Big data giant Databricks announced on Monday that it has signed a final agreement to acquire San Francisco-based AI startup MosaicML for $1.3 billion, **becoming the largest known acquisition in the field of AIGC this year. **

It is worth noting that MosaicML is a very young generative AI company. It was established in San Francisco in 2021. It has only publicly disclosed one round of financing and has only 62 employees. In the last round of financing, its valuation was 220 million US dollars, that is to say, the valuation of the acquisition of MosaicML directly jumped 6 times.

Meanwhile, financial automation platform Ramp acquired OpenAI rival Cohere.io. According to Ramp, the deal aims to introduce AIGC into the financial sector, help automate customer workflows, improve user experience, and reduce costs and increase efficiency for companies.

OpenAI stock is snapped up, share price soars

AI and machine learning have been the most in-demand areas for investment each month so far this year, accounting for 25% to 30% of investor interest, according to private equity marketplace EquityZen Securities Inc. On private-market securities trading platform Rainmaker Securities, investors are snapping up shares of this year’s hottest AI startups, including OpenAI and Anthropic.

“Institutional investors have become more aggressive,” Brianne Lynch, director of market insights at EquityZen, said in an interview with Bloomberg. She also said that since May, retail investors’ transactions in AI have also picked up.

Glen Anderson, co-founder of Rainmaker, noted that the number of buyers outnumbered the number of shares they wanted to sell, resulting in prices that were much higher than in earlier funding rounds.

He said bidders were willing to pay a 25% premium over the most recent round,** while investor bids for OpenAI soared to $80** from the $67 quoted in the previous round.