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Most data for today’s episode was provided by our partner Multiples.vc, your go-to source for verified M&A valuation multiples and public comps based on analyst estimates, at a fraction of the price of legacy data providers.

With this monthly format, we aim to unify market & valuation data into a single episode, so you don’t need to check various sources for a complete picture. Here’s what we’ll cover today:

We have a lot on the agenda, so let’s jump in👇

SpaceX continues to lead at $800B, with OpenAI and Tether unchanged at $500B each. The top 3 remains stable, but the real story this month happened off the table: SpaceX officially acquired xAI in early February in a $1.25T all-stock merger, the largest in history, ahead of a planned IPO.

In case you lost track of Elon’s transactions, here’s a brief summary:

Otherwise, Anthropic moves up to #4 at $370B (from ~$350B), overtaking ByteDance which slips to #5. This signals continued capital concentration into frontier model builders, with Anthropic now the third most valuable pure AI company globally behind the SpaceX-xAI combination and OpenAI.

The notable new entry is Waymo at #9 with $126B, replacing Reliance Retail and marking the first time a pure-play autonomy company has broken into the private mega-cap top 10. Databricks holds steady at $134B, while Stripe rounds out the list at $107B.

Non-AI megacaps remain in execution mode, while the market's repricing energy stays concentrated in AI and frontier tech.

Companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are signaling IPO ambitions, yet the fundamental bottleneck hasn't changed: liquidity.

Last year, only 20% of our Top 50 list eventually completed an IPO. The remaining 80%? Still waiting in line, growing larger and more complex in the private markets while investors sit on paper returns.

As valuations climb and holding periods stretch, the pressure to find an exit is building, but the window remains narrow.

Here’s our 2026 IPO list based on rumours, plans, and status quo of their operations:

Since creating the list in early January, none of the 50 candidates have completed an IPO, and the list itself remains unchanged. The window is open in theory, but the mega-cap names continue to hold.

So let’s move on and look at the second path for liquidity.

In light of very few public listings in the last few months, M&A has surged to become the more critical path for liquidity.

M&A activity remains high.

The number of disclosed transactions ticked up slightly relative to 2024, but the real story is deal volume: $2.7T in 2025 vs $1.8T in 2024, a 50% increase YoY. Average deal size surged from $720M to $1,094M, confirming the trend toward fewer small deals and significantly bigger transactions.

Early 2026 data reinforces this. With $0.7T in volume across just 7 weeks, the year is running well ahead of pace. More striking is the $3,554M average deal size, more than 3x the 2025 average, signaling that mega-deals are dominating the early pipeline.

The top of the M&A market is dominated by two massive outliers this month.

The Devon Energy x Coterra Energy merger at $253.5B is the largest deal by far, a mega-cap energy consolidation play clearing at 38.4x revenue and 57.6x EBITDA. Right behind it, the SpaceX x xAI deal at $250B reinforces the narrative from our private market section, with its implied 893x EV/Revenue reflecting xAI's early-stage revenue base rather than any conventional pricing logic.

Below the two headline transactions, the landscape shifts to financial services, insurance, and natural resources. Carlyle's $22B take-private of Lukoil International, Santander's acquisition of Webster Bank at $12.3B, and Zurich Insurance Group's $11B pickup of Beazley all signal active consolidation by both strategic buyers and PE across traditional sectors.

The median EV of the top 10 sits at $8.1B, with a median EV/Revenue of 3.3x, well above the overall 30-day median of $213M at 2.6x. The gap between the two confirms the same pattern as prior months: capital is available, but overwhelmingly concentrated at the very top of the market.

Sorted by EV/Revenue, the xAI x SpaceX deal again tops the list at 893x, an extreme outlier that reflects strategic consolidation rather than conventional valuation logic. Coterra Energy follows at 38.4x, a premium that underscores the scarcity value of scaled energy assets in a supply-constrained environment.

The most interesting signal sits in the middle of the table: IonQ's acquisition of SkyWater Technology at 5.2x revenue but 69.2x EBITDA highlights how quantum and semiconductor-adjacent infrastructure commands steep earnings premiums even at modest revenue multiples. Similarly, Donaldson's pickup of Facet Filtration at 7.6x revenue and 20.0x EBITDA reflects willingness to pay up for industrial niche leaders.

The top 10 median by EV/Revenue sits at 5.3x with a median deal size of $1.6B, roughly double the overall 30-day median of 2.6x at $213M. The pattern remains consistent: premiums concentrate where strategic urgency or asset scarcity is highest, while the broader market clears at disciplined multiples.

Compared to last month, multiples are down meaningfully and the correction is broad-based.

Let’s start with a snapshot of top companies based on EV / NTM Revenue multiples. For all analysis below, we exclude companies with market caps below $1B and non-meaningful multiples above 100x.

The Top 10 average EV/NTM revenue declined from 22.4x in January to 18.1x in February, with the median moving from 16.7x to 13.1x. This is the sharpest month-over-month compression we've seen in this series. Growth remained stable at ~25% average, confirming that fundamentals held, but prices adjusted more aggressively than in prior months.

In short: the re-rating of premium assets is accelerating.

Palantir remains #1 but saw its multiple compress from ~66x to 50x despite maintaining 43% growth and improving EBITDA margins to 49%. AppLovin dropped from its prior position with its multiple falling to 16.8x, though it continues to post best-in-class profitability at 77% EBITDA margin. Snowflake and Shopify are new entrants to the bottom of the Top 10, replacing names that compressed out of the ranking entirely.

At the index level, gross margins eased slightly (Top 10 median from 80% to 77%), while EBITDA margins improved meaningfully (median from ~25% to 29%), suggesting companies are shifting from reinvestment mode toward profitability.

The overall median sits at just 2.3x, reinforcing the widening gap between the elite and the rest of the market.

The trendline confirms what the Top 10 table showed: after peaking near ~20x in late 2025, the Top 10 Median has pulled back sharply to ~15x, its lowest level since mid-2024.

The Overall Median remains anchored near ~2x, virtually unchanged since 2022. The gap between the two is narrowing, but not because the broader market is re-rating upward; rather, top-tier valuations are correcting downward toward the long-term trend.

The Top 50 average declined from 11.4x in January to 9.0x in February, a significant compression that tracks with the Top 10 correction. Palantir remains a clear outlier at 50x, with a steep drop-off to Cloudflare at 25.0x and the rest of the list clustering below 20x.

The pressure is broad-based, not concentrated at the top, confirming that the multiple reset is working its way through the entire premium cohort.

Below tables show the average and median EV / NTM revenue multiples as well as efficiency metrics like revenue per FTE and rule of 40 by sector👇