M & A

Walmart is aggressively pursuing Amazon's affluent customer base through Walmart+, its membership program priced at $98 annually versus Prime's $139. The service bundles faster grocery delivery, discounted premium brands like Rao's sauce and Topo Chico, and free Peacock streaming. E-commerce now represents 18% of Walmart's revenue, with sales exceeding $100 billion last fiscal year and growing 20% in Q4—four times the pace of overall sales. Walmart+ membership has reached approximately 30 million U.S. subscribers, up 29% recently, while Amazon Prime holds 201 million subscribers with only 3% growth. About 25% of Americans now subscribe to both services.

EssilorLuxottica reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of €7.127 billion, a 10.8% increase at constant exchange rates and the company's third consecutive double-digit quarter. Growth was driven by AI-enabled Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, North American sales up 12.5%, and EMEA up 9.5%. The stock fell approximately 5% on the Paris CAC 40, making it the index's largest loser. The decline reflects investor concern that growth has decelerated from 18% in late 2025 and that smart glasses—which sold 7 million pairs in 2025 compared to 2 million combined in 2023-2024—are now contributing only mid-single-digit percentage points to overall revenue growth.

The "Tech, Media & Telecom Roundup: Market Talk" on April 9, 2026, summarizes recent developments in the sector, including Meta's AI content licensing deals, massive AI infrastructure investments by Amazon and Meta, ongoing tech layoffs, telecom 5G progress, and market shifts like Berkshire Hathaway reducing its Amazon stake.[1][2][6][7]

Apple announced Monday that John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become CEO on September 1, 2026, replacing Tim Cook. Cook, who has led the company for 15 years and increased its market value by $3.6 trillion, will transition to executive chairman. Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran who joined in 2001, has spent his career in hardware engineering and most recently designed external displays and other hardware products.

Amazon announced on April 21, 2026, a commitment to invest up to $25 billion in Anthropic, with $5 billion available immediately and the remaining $20 billion contingent on specific commercial milestones. The investment values Anthropic at $380 billion, matching its Series G valuation from February. In tandem, Anthropic agreed to spend more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next decade, securing up to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon's custom Trainium chips and Graviton processors. The deal represents Amazon's second major AI infrastructure play in two months, following a similar $50 billion commitment to OpenAI in February.

On April 14, 2026, Anthropic appointed Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, to its Board of Directors. The appointment, made by the Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust, gives trust-appointed directors majority control of the board. Narasimhan is a physician-scientist who has overseen development of more than 35 novel medicines at Novartis. He becomes the first pharmaceutical executive on Anthropic's governing body, which operates under a public benefit corporation structure designed to balance shareholder interests with the company's stated mission of developing AI responsibly for long-term human benefit.

Jane Street, the quantitative trading firm, committed $6 billion to CoreWeave's AI cloud platform and purchased $1 billion in CoreWeave Class A common stock at $109 per share. The deal grants Jane Street access to next-generation compute infrastructure across multiple facilities, including NVIDIA's Vera Rubin technology, along with integrated software, dedicated connectivity, custom storage, and technical support for its AI research operations.

Patlytics, an AI platform for patent lifecycle management, closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by SignalFire. The round included N47, Myriad Venture Partners, Relativity, Alumni Ventures, Antiportfolio Ventures, and BAM Corner Point, bringing total funding to approximately $65 million since the company's founding less than two and a half years ago. The New York-based firm, led by CEO Paul Lee, counts over 40% of the Am Law 100 among its customers, along with corporate IP teams at Rivian, Xerox, and Canon.

OpenAI is abandoning consumer products to focus on enterprise customers, announcing a new AI model called Spud designed for high-value professional work with enhanced reasoning capabilities and reliable outputs. The company is discontinuing consumer initiatives including the Sora video application to redirect computational resources toward profitability. The shift addresses a structural problem: 95 percent of ChatGPT's 900 million weekly users operate on free accounts, creating unsustainable cost pressures.

SK Hynix reported record operating profit for the first quarter of 2026, with earnings surging more than fivefold and revenue climbing 198 percent to 52.6 trillion won. The South Korean memory chip maker attributed the surge to explosive demand for high-bandwidth memory chips that has outpaced production capacity. Nvidia remains the primary customer, driving orders for AI data center infrastructure. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won warned that wafer shortages will persist through 2030, even as the company plans aggressive capacity increases, including an eightfold expansion of DRAM production this year and a $13 billion investment in AI memory. Competitors Samsung and Micron are similarly reallocating manufacturing capacity toward AI products.

Nir Zuk, founder of Palo Alto Networks, has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in an unnamed California-based Liberty Bank, announcing the deal on April 13, 2026. Zuk plans to overhaul the bank's operations using artificial intelligence technologies, leveraging his background in cybersecurity and fintech.

Anthropic has fielded multiple investment offers valuing the AI startup at up to $800 billion, more than double its $380 billion valuation from February 2026. The company has not confirmed the offers, and Reuters could not independently verify them. Secondary market data from Caplight shows Anthropic shares trading at $688 billion, up 75% in three months.

Grab, the Singapore-based ride-hailing and super app platform, is integrating robotics and artificial intelligence into its delivery operations as part of a broader competitive strategy across Southeast Asia. CEO Anthony Tan announced the expansion, which represents an escalation of the company's super app model beyond mobility and financial services into automated last-mile logistics.

Neurocrine Biosciences announced on April 6, 2026, a definitive agreement to acquire Soleno Therapeutics for $2.9 billion in cash, paying $53 per share—a 34% premium to Soleno's April 2 closing price and 51% to its 30-day VWAP.[1][2][3][4] The deal, approved by both boards, targets Soleno's Vykat XR (diazoxide choline), the first FDA-approved therapy for hyperphagia in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare genetic disorder affecting ~10,000-20,000 U.S. patients with relentless hunger driving obesity, diabetes, and mortality risks like stomach rupture.[1][2][4][6][8] Expected to close within 90 days, Neurocrine will fund it with cash on hand and modest prepayable debt, adding a third first-in-class marketed drug alongside Ingrezza ($2.51B 2025 revenue) and Crenessity.[3][4][8]

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP has hired a former Kirkland & Ellis partner to lead banking and finance matters within its newly formed capital structure solutions practice in San Francisco. The move, announced April 22, represents the latest in a series of lateral recruits from Kirkland to staff the specialized group. David Nemecek, a distressed companies specialist, heads the practice after joining from Kirkland in early 2026. At least two additional Kirkland partners have joined since March 2026.