Axios Pro Rata
October 02, 2025
Top of the Morning
Today's column didn't come together in time, so let's open the notebook:
💰 Capital consequences: Allianz Capital Partners this week laid off nearly a dozen employees, including some in the U.S., as part of a quiet reorganization of a team that manages manages fund commitments and co-investments.
- Among the cuts was Susanne Forsingdal, a 10-year Allianz vet who led the group's New York investment team.
- Allianz isn't commenting, but a source says the moves were a direct result of private equity's distributions drought. In short, the firm has slowed new commitments as its returns have remained mostly on paper instead of in the mail.
🎮 Playing the game: There have been multiple reports this week that Jared Kushner was key to getting the Electronic Arts mega-buyout talks kicked off.
- First, this helps explain how someone who runs relatively little money was able to get into the largest LBO of all time.
- Second, this should significantly raise Kushner's power profile in private equity circles — a legitimate dealmaker, rather than just a well-connected one.
But it's not without some controversy. During a White House press briefing yesterday, a question was asked about Kushner being involved in recent peace negotiations with Qatar when his private equity firm counts Qatar's sovereign wealth fund among its largest limited partners.
- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the question "despicable," without addressing its substance.
📈 Speaking of EA, the deal pushed global M&A volume in 2025 past the $3 trillion mark.
- The last time volume topped $3 trillion through three quarters was in 2021, when it was $4.1 billion, per LSEG.
- Also worth noting that EA further contributes to the lopsided deal market we discussed last week.
🚑 Bio boom: We're learning more about VZVC, the new firm launched by Vijay Pande (ex-a16z) and Zack Werner (Snapdragon).
- The pair tell me that they want to invest in startups that are applying AI to health care, particularly in areas like services and prevention.
- They met while on the board of Function Health, and believe that health care is entering a new era where consumers, not providers, are making tech adoption decisions.
- Not surprisingly, they declined to discuss fundraising plans (but, obviously, there are fundraising plans).
I also asked about the recent glut of AI startups focused on areas like health appointment scheduling, which comes after a similar surge in AI "scribe" efforts.
- Werner replied: "Not every TAM in health care is large enough, but the number of people who can slap application layers on someone else's LLM is very high ... Scribes is not a wholly complicated thing to do, but full-stack, complex care navigation across multiple specialties is."
The BFD
Yahoo, owned by Apollo Global Management, is in advanced talks to sell AOL for $1.4 billion to Italy's Bending Spoons, per Reuters.
Why it's the BFD: It's 2025 — yes, I double-checked — and AOL is may be worth one and a half unicorns.
Zoom in: Bending Spoons focuses on acquiring and rehabbing dilapidated web assets, including Brightcove, Evernote, Meetup, and Vimeo. It's also a 2026 IPO candidate.
- Backers include Durable Capital Partners, Cox Enterprises, and Baillie Gifford.
The bottom line: "AOL still drives hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow." — Sara Fischer, Axios
Venture Capital Deals
Private Equity Deals
Public Offerings
Liquidity Events
More M&A
Fundraising
It's Personnel
Final Numbers
The AI boom is leading to a surge in energy and power deals, which are up from 2024 with an entire quarter to go.
Axios Pro Rata
