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👇

Across the board, the composition of the top 10 did not change between October and November, indicating that the explosive ascent of AI companies had already re-shaped the leaderboard earlier in the year.

Talking about the private market asset class, one bottleneck remains liquidity. So let’s look at the first of two channels: IPOs.

After an active summer with companies like Figma or Klarna successfuly completing their IPOs, the last month for public listings was even slower than the previous one with no further public listing.

Looking at the share price development of the two most hyped tech IPOs this summer, Figma is 55% down from July 2025 (chart above) and Klarna down by 25% from September 2025 (chart below). Ouch..

Halfway through the last quarter of 2025, we have about 80% of our 2025 IPO candidate list left. Many of whom are cueing up and hoping for the window to widen and remain open.

At least as interesting as public markets these days is M&A activity, the second path for liquidity in the private market asset class.

M&A activity remains high.

In the chart above, we only include M&A transactions with confirmed EVs available at Multiples.vc, thus structurally exclude the long tail noise of smaller EV transactions.

While we’re at 74% in number of transactions relative to the FY2024 (2.748 deals YTD vs 3708 deals in FY 2024), the deal volume has now surpassed the FY2024 by 11% - a clear indication towards fewer but significantly bigger transactions as confirmed by a 50% increase in deal size YoY.

Over the last 30 days, the largest M&A deals have been concentrated in health-related sectors (Health & Beauty, Medical Devices, Biopharma) and critical infrastructure (Utilities, Energy, Semiconductors). Deal sizes are substantial, with a median EV of $11.3B among the top 10, far above the overall market median of $315M, indicating that mega-cap strategic buyers are driving the activity.

Multiples are elevated as well: top-10 targets trade at a median 4.6× revenue and 13.5× EBITDA, both significantly higher than the broader market’s 2.2× and 10.2×. Overall, the trend suggests a flight toward high-quality, recession-resilient assets and heavy consolidation by industry incumbents.

These deals show that the highest-multiple acquisitions in the past month skew heavily toward AI software, biopharma, and medical devices, where buyers paid 7–19× forward revenue, far above the broader market’s 2.2×.

Despite smaller enterprise values than the mega-deals previously discussed, strategic buyers are clearly willing to pay steep premiums for differentiated IP, regulatory moats, or mission-critical software. The median EV/EBITDA multiple (16.4×) also far exceeds the overall market, reinforcing that high-growth, high-margin businesses continue to command outlier valuations.

Overall, the data highlights a barbell trend: while large strategics consolidate stable, recession-proof assets, they also aggressively bid up scarce high-innovation targets.

Compared to last month, multiples are down (for the first time since we started this format in March this year).

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.

Between October and November, the top 10 EV/NTM revenue list shifted meaningfully. Palantir’s multiple dropped from 78× to 67×, but it remained #1, while SoundHound and Shopify dropped out, replaced by CyberArk and Datadog, and Figma re-entered at a lower rank.

Overall valuations compressed: the top-10 average fell from 28.3× to 24.3× and the median from 21.9× to 18.7×, while revenue growth and margins stayed largely stable. The market is clearly rotating toward profitable, scaled enterprise software names while de-rating some of the highest-multiple growth stories.

After some up and down in the Top 10 Median throughout the last three months, the last 30 days have shown a flattening line, indicating that top tier valuations are under pressure. The gap between the Overall Median and Top 10 Median stopped materially changing.

The top 50 average saw another decline from previously 13.3x to 12.3x. The trend is in line with the Top 10 average and shows that companies are under pressure across the spectrum.

Below table shows the average and median EV / NTM revenue multiples by sector.