⏰ Less than 24 hours until the Virtual DDVC Summit 23-25th March where the best investment firms in the world share how they use AI and tools like OpenClaw, Claude, n8n & more to generate alpha

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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👇

The dominant macro event of March is the US-Israeli war on Iran, launched on February 28 with joint airstrikes on Iranian leadership and military infrastructure.

Iranian retaliation has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of global oil and gas supplies transit, sending Brent crude from $72 to over $106/barrel and global stocks down 5.5% in under three weeks.

The rate cut path has repriced sharply. Markets went from pricing two 0.25pp cuts in 2026 to one, with September now the most likely timing. The stagflationary setup, rising energy-driven inflation combined with slowing growth, leaves the Fed with little room in either direction.

For private market investors, the implications are direct. Private marks lag public moves by one to two quarters, meaning the multiple compression now accelerating in public markets will show up in portfolio valuations through Q2 and Q3.

A valuation gap is forming between sellers anchored to 2025 multiples and buyers pricing in 2026 risk, and the IPO window is narrowing further.

The short-conflict scenario allows multiples to stabilize in H2. The extended-conflict scenario, with oil at $130/barrel in Q2, would make 2026 a genuine vintage year test for portfolios built on 2021-2023 entry prices.

Against that backdrop, here is where the private mega-cap market stands.

The top 3 is unchanged: SpaceX at $800B, OpenAI and Tether tied at $500B each. Below the top 3, the composition is also largely stable with one exception.

Stripe is the story of the month.

Its estimated valuation jumped from $107B in February to $159B in March, a $52B increase in a single month driven by a share sale, moving it from #10 to #8 and pushing Databricks to #9 and Waymo to #10.

No new funding announcement accompanied the move, suggesting the market is repricing Stripe's payments infrastructure more aggressively as fintech multiples stabilize. At $159B, Stripe is now valued higher than Databricks ($134B) and Waymo ($126B) combined for the first time.

Anthropic holds at #4 ($370B) and ByteDance at #5 ($330B), with frontier AI capital concentration unchanged from last month. xAI remains listed separately at #6 ($230B) despite the SpaceX merger announced in February, reflecting the usual lag between deal close and data provider consolidation.

Non-AI names continue to hold without meaningful revaluation. The private market repricing story in March is almost entirely a Stripe story.

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

The IPO window remains largely theoretical. As of March, none of the 50 candidates on our January list have completed a public listing, and the list itself remains unchanged.

The combination of macro uncertainty and mega-cap preference for staying private continues to push the window further out. Given that only 20% of last year's list eventually completed an IPO, the question for 2026 is less about when the window opens and more about which names are willing to accept the valuation reset that public markets would impose.

Before risking to theorize too much, 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.

M&A volume has now crossed $1.0T YTD, up from $0.7T reported through the first 7 weeks of the year in February. Transaction count sits at approximately 3k for the year so far, tracking broadly in line with 2025's pace.

The average deal size of $2,080M is the more telling number. It remains nearly 2x the 2025 full-year average of $1,094M, confirming that the shift toward larger, more concentrated transactions is structural rather than a single-month anomaly driven by last month's mega-deals.

This month's top 10 looks fundamentally different from February.

The two $250B+ transactions (Devon/Coterra and SpaceX/xAI) that defined last month's table are gone, replaced by a more conventional mix led by UK Power Networks' acquisition by Engie at $14.2B.

The sector composition shift is notable: energy infrastructure, biotech/pharma, aviation finance, and commodities now dominate. Arcellx's acquisition by Gilead Sciences at $7.8B and 217.3x EV/Revenue is the single most striking data point, reflecting the extreme premiums strategic buyers are willing to pay for late-stage clinical assets.

The top 10 median EV sits at $3,950M with a median EV/Revenue of 13.6x and EV/EBITDA of 12.7x. The overall 30-day median of $72M at 1.6x EV/Revenue confirms the same pattern as prior months: scale and strategic urgency command extraordinary premiums, while the long tail of M&A clears at disciplined multiples.

Sorted by EV/Revenue, Arcellx tops the table at 217x, an outlier that reflects Gilead's urgency to acquire a proven clinical-stage asset rather than any conventional pricing logic.

IQM Quantum Computers follows at 51.4x, reinforcing that quantum infrastructure continues to attract premium valuations similar to semiconductor-adjacent deals we tracked last month.

The middle of the table tells a more grounded story. The top 10 by EV/Revenue median sits at 4.7x with a median deal size of just $776M, well below February's $1.6B median, signaling that outside the outliers, this month's high-multiple deals are smaller and more niche.

The overall market continues to clear at 1.6x EV/Revenue, effectively unchanged.

Despite the macro uncertainty throughout the past few weeks, the sharpest phase of the correction may be ending. The average continued to compress, but the median stabilized.

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 modestly from 18.1x in February to 17.0x in March. More telling is the median: it ticked up from 13.1x to 13.6x, the first positive month-over-month move in this series since the compression cycle began.

The overall median also edged up from 2.3x to 2.4x, its highest reading in several months.

Palantir remains #1 but its multiple continued to compress from 50x in February to 43.1x in March, despite 55% revenue growth and a 57% EBITDA margin. AppLovin held roughly flat at 17.2x (vs 16.8x in February), and Shopify remains at the bottom of the top 10 at 9.8x.

The composition of the top 10 shifted more meaningfully than the headline averages suggest. SoundHound, CyberArk, VeriSign, and TechnologyOne are new entrants, replacing names that compressed out of the ranking entirely.

Premium multiples are increasingly reserved for companies with either extreme growth (Palantir at 55%, AppLovin at 41%) or a combination of high margins and durable revenue quality.

At the index level, the Top 10 average EBITDA margin improved to 37% from 29% in February, while average growth ticked down slightly to 25%. Companies are being rewarded for profitability improvement even as absolute multiples compress.

Below is the EV/NTM Revenue trendline, the top 50 list, and the multiples split by sector 👇