Q1 2025 Was Full of Startup M and A Beyond Just Wiz

It's not just Wiz - Q1 was full of M&A for early-stage startups as well.

Chart below looks at deals in Q1 over the last 5 years.

Here's the data from US startups using Carta:

• Most M&A transactions in a single quarter for companies that had yet to raise priced funding: 48 deals

• Most M&A transactions in a single quarter for Seed + Series A companies: 107 deals

• Highest quarter ever for M&A on Carta: 180 deals

So best Q1 ever and best quarter ever period in terms of deal count.

Animal spirits do seem to be coming back.

Now there are a few things we don't know, unfortunately. We don't know whether these deals all resulted in big payouts for the founders and employees (my instinct is many were acquihires or small wins at the early stages).

We don't know how many of them cleared the last valuation price (or cleared any liquidation preferences that may have existed, although those are rare in the early stages overall).

This activity is needed but obviously doesn't go very far in replacing liquidity from IPOs - fingers crossed we see a few more of those now that Coreweave is out.

Here's to Q2!

#startups #founders #mergers #acquisitions #startupdeals