Dealmakers are feeling frisky, shouting from the rooftops that Donald Trump's election will lead to a surge in new merger activity.

• Sentiment often sparks strategy, so it's reasonable to believe in the animal spirits.
• But it's also fair to sprinkle in some skepticism.

Reality check: America's deal market isn't in distress.

• U.S. M&A dollar volume was up 20% year-over-year through the end of Q3, according to LSEG. Private equity-backed deal value for U.S. targets was up 45%.
• Moreover, average annual dollar volume has been higher under Biden than it was under Trump, even if you exclude COVID-tinged 2020. Not a knock on Trump's tenure — just some context.
• Oh, and we're more than two years into a bull stock market.

Zoom in: One major argument for a deal boom is that Trump will be much softer on antitrust than was Biden, whose FTC and DOJ arguably killed lots of deals in their cribs. Probably, but only to a point.

• Trump tried to block a lot more mergers than people seem to remember, in a wide array of industries. And he's never been friendly toward the Big Tech companies that have been hesitant to buy VC-backed companies.
• Also, don't be surprised if Trump's antitrust cops continue their existing investigations, much like what happened last time with the proposed DraftKings-FanDuel merger.

Macro look: Interest rates are a key merger driver, particularly for private equity, and they have been coming down (another 25bp cut yesterday).

• But Trump is also promising massive tariffs that could cause the Fed to slow its roll, and Jay Powell says he won't leave before his term expires in 2026 (even if Trump asks him to).
• The only thing worse for deal markets than stubborn rates would be a noisy clash over who controls monetary policy.

Micro look: Finally, there's the plight of venture capital, which is gummed up because of too few distributions.

• Hard to see how a new administration helps here. Part of the trouble is a herd of unicorns that got stranded when they took too much money at inflated valuations. A lot of them are dead but just don't know it yet.
• The other issue is that private markets have become self-sustaining, providing winners with so much later-stage funding that there's no need to ever go public (which is where the top returns usually come from). Again, not a federal policy problem.

The bottom line: Dealmakers are talking up their books. Let's give it some time before declaring them bestsellers.

OpenAI paid around $15 million to purchase the Chat.com domain from HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah.

Why it's the BFD: This is believed to be one of the most expensive domain purchases ever, albeit a far cry from the $872 million that Gannett paid in 2014 for Cars.com (as part of a broader purchase).

What they're saying: Shah insists that he wasn't domain-squatting, telling me:

"I had not actually bought the domain with the intention of selling it. I had originally planned to build an application similar to what ChatGPT has become now, because at the time, I didn't think OpenAI would really want to build an application. I thought they were going to be a pure 'platform' play.

Once I realized that they were indeed committed to ChatGPT (which happened at a talk Sam Altman gave), I figured out that I was accidentally competing with OpenAI. So, decided to sell the domain to them — because I'm not smart enough to compete against OpenAI."

• Fractional, a startup enabling users to co-invest in properties together, raised $15m in Series A funding led by Fifth Wall Ventures, per Axios Pro. axios.link/3YECkon

• Marosa, an accounting SaaS for invoicing and compliance, raised €12m from Aquiline. axios.link/3UGqmcs

• Lerian, a Brazilian core banking startup, raised around $3.2m. Maya Capital led, and was joined by Quartz, Supera Capital, Norte Ventures, and Crivo Ventures. axios.link/40E75MQ

• SocialCrowd, an LA-based platform for optimizing hourly workforce performance, raised $2.5m. Bread and Butter Ventures and Augment Ventures co-led, and were joined by FullCircle, Serac Ventures, and VC414. axios.link/3AsiAfz

• Ulysses, an SF-based developer of autonomous underwater drones, raised $2m in pre-seed funding. Lowercarbon Capital led, and was joined by Superorganism and ReGen Ventures. axios.link/40AWpye

• Affinity Equity Partners is in talks to acquire Indonesian gummy maker Yupi Indo Jelly Gum for $1.2b, per Reuters. axios.link/3NYECtq

• AT&T (NYSE: T) agreed to buy some wireless spectrum licenses from U.S. Cellular (NYSE: USM) for $1.02b. axios.link/40yMedL

🔥 Better Protection, a portfolio company of Abry Partners, acquired DFS Fire Systems, a provider of fire protection services in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. btrprotection.com

🚑 Choice Health at Home, backed by Coltala Holdings and Trive Capital, acquired Oklahoma City-based hospice provider Accentra. axios.link/4fDjKDW

• Guidepost Growth Equity invested £42m for a minority stake in Kaizen, a London-based provider of regulatory reporting and compliance software for financial institutions. axios.link/3NVOfJt

🚑 Performance Home Medical, a Kent, Wash.-based medical equipment provider, raised $55m from Grant Avenue Capital, per Axios Pro. axios.link/4emYp0u

🚑 Savillex, a portfolio company of Thompson Street Capital Partners, acquired Optimum Processing, a San Rafael, Calif., maker of customized, single-use bioprocessing systems for life science. savillex.com

• GSR III Acquisition, a SPAC led by Gus Garcia (ex-BofA) and Lewis Silberman (Oppenheimer), raised $200m in its IPO. axios.link/4d2iUPN

• Navios South American Logistics, a provider of transportation and storage solutions in the Hidrovia region of South America, withdrew registration for a $100m IPO. It was being spun out of Navios (NYSE: NM). axios.link/3Ckyyc7

• General Atlantic and Stripes are leading a tender offer for early employees and investors in Vuori, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based activewear company, at a $5.5b valuation, per Bloomberg. The company was last valued at $4b in a 2021 investment by SoftBank. axios.link/48DQVoB

• Serve Robotics (Nasdaq: SERV) agreed to buy the assets of Vebu, an El Segundo, Calif., provider of automation and robotics solutions for restaurants whose backers included Chipotle. vebulabs.com

• Yelp (NYSE: YELP) acquired RepairPal, an auto repair price estimator, for $80m in cash. RepairPal had raised over $40m from backers like BP Ventures, Nimble Ventures, USAA Ventures, Classified Ventures, and Castrol InnoVentures. axios.link/3YXUxyz

• BlackRock is in talks to buy a minority stake in hedge fund Millennium Management, per the FT. axios.link/40DzGSd

• Bremer Financial, a Minnesota bank with $1.35b of equity capital, is seeking a buyer, per Bloomberg. axios.link/3UL5P6D

• Bumper, a British auto financing startup, acquired AutoBI, a provider of business intelligence tools for auto retailers and OEMs. Bumper has raised about $100m from backers like Autotech Ventures, Shell Ventures and Porsche Ventures. axios.link/4hFciKk

• CRH (NYSE: CRH) may revive the sale of its Philippines cement business, per Bloomberg. axios.link/3ChXz81

• Portugal's government will revive its sale of air carrier TAP next year, after receiving interest from more than a dozen suitors. axios.link/3YEvUWb

🚑 Tempus AI, (Nasdaq: TEM) a Chicago precision medicine analytics company, acquired Ambry Genetics, an Aliso Viejo, Calif., provider of hereditary cancer screening solutions, for $600m. axios.link/3CfzYVb

• Cendana Capital is raising $350m for its sixth VC fund-of-funds, per an SEC filing.

🚑 Healthier Capital, a VC firm led by Amir Dan Rubin (former CEO of One Medical, which was acquired by Amazon), is raising $200m for its debut fund, per an SEC filing.