Bill Gurley

M&A is a bit harder to unpack.

Everyone blamed it on Lena Kahn, but she's gone.

And we didn't have record M&A in the first five months of the year.

It's likely MAG7 related.

Those seven companies are sitting on an ungodly amount of cash.

And in any natural universe, that would lead to massive M&A.

And I'm sure they would love to use it for that.

I think they'd buy back stock for it because they can't.

But Washington's not excited about it.

The EU is really not excited about them being active.

And it's a stuck situation.

People don't want to enter into an M&A agreement with a low certainty of close.

And even the WIS deal, which is the big outlier this year, the minute they announced it, they said it would take over a year to close.

That's very difficult for a board and a management team to take on waiting a year.

It's hard.

How far is SpaceX from being there already?

We will get to that.

And then the last thing that could be hurting M&A is the overpricing.

We did in 2021 and we continue today to fund the most exciting companies to perfection.

And that can have an impact on M&A as well.