Axios Event: New Trump administration and AI will impact deals in 2025

Global markets are preparing for uncertainty over how new leadership in Washington, and new technologies will impact the regulatory environment for deals in 2025.

Why it matters: The policies of the incoming Trump administration and the impacts of AI will set the tone for dealmaking in the years to come.

Axios' Dan Primack spoke with Floodgate co-founding partner Ann Miura-Ko and FirstMark co-founder and partner Rick Heitzmann during a Dec. 11 virtual event sponsored by Cooley.

What they're saying: "Now what we're seeing is that there's this opportunity potentially with AI to also revisit what do founders need not only in their initial round of financing, but over the course of their entire startup story," Miura-Ko said.

• Miura-Ko said we're undergoing a big technological shift with AI that she thinks could possibly help companies scale at lower costs.

IPO activity could pick back up in 2025, Heitzmann said, but he isn't expecting a drastic change from this year's slowdown.

• "It'll change a little bit, but probably not as much as any of us want. Everyone's been waiting for the IPO spigot to open," Heitzmann said.
• "In large part, I think the IPO window will open in Q2-ish of 2025 and be open, but there won't be enough room in that spigot to let everybody through," Heitzmann continued.

Sponsored content:

In a View From the Top sponsored segment, Cooley partner Kevin Cooper said that he expects antitrust enforcement in the new Trump administration to remain "robust," and that Trump's scrutiny of big tech may impact M&A in the sector.

• "Overall, we do not expect in this narrow area of antitrust, for the switch from Biden to Trump to be a complete 180. We should still expect a robust antitrust enforcement agency," said Cooper.
• "We're optimistic that overall in the tech sector, we'll see activity continue to increase as that environment comes out of a particularly depressed state over the past couple of years. But we would not necessarily, again, expect an opening of the floodgates for big tech in particular," he continued.