Please Advise: Deal Sheet
Tech, strategy, and the polite chaos of deals and M&A.
Week of July 14, 2025
TL;DR
Vertical M&A is heating up, and regulators are riding shotgun.
Synopsys locks in full-stack chip control. Apple shores up its supply chain. And AI infrastructure keeps rolling.
Fewer deals, bigger moves—and capital is flowing toward what can’t be disrupted.
Deals & Rumors
Synopsys completes $35B acquisition of Ansys
China’s market regulator granted conditional approval on July 14, clearing the final hurdle on this long-awaited chip design consolidation. Yahoo Finance
Apple signs $500M commit deal with MP Materials
Announced July 16, this rare-earth magnet supply agreement tightens Apple’s U.S.-based hardware supply chain. Reuters
CoreWeave to acquire Core Scientific for $9B in stock
Though announced July 7, the confirmation and terms continued to develop through this week—an AI infra play worth flagging. InsideHPC
Deal of the Week: Synopsys + Ansys
The Deal
$35 billion all-cash acquisition of Ansys (the engineering simulation folks).
Timeline
18 months from “let’s do this” to “it’s done.”
Final Boss
China’s regulators, who apparently needed some convincing.
Why It Matters
Chips are complicated. Designing them is one thing. Simulating whether they’ll work under real-world conditions is another. Synopsys just became that someone. They now own the software that designs your chips—and the software that simulates whether those chips will actually work.
This move strengthens their vertical position in EDA (electronic design automation) and locks in more control across the hardware-software stack. NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel are all watching closely.
Sara’s Take
When you control both the blueprint and the crash test dummy, you're no longer just in the process—you are the process.
Market Trends & Takeaways
Vertical consolidation is back. Synopsys and CoreWeave are betting big on owning the full stack—from tools to compute to infrastructure.
The new normal for mega-deals? Not fast. Just thorough. Regulators are part of the roadmap now. 18 months for a deal like this will start feeling normal. Don’t bring a Q1 close date to a Q4 fight.
Random Observation: In a world where everyone talks about "disruption," sometimes the smartest move is to own the thing that can't be disrupted. Hard to disrupt the software that literally every chip company needs to function.
From the Data Room
Insight:
Global tech M&A deal value rose 15% in Q2, but volume fell 11%. Infrastructure and vertical plays are doing all the lifting.
One standout:
Alternative financing (private credit, all-equity deals) is quietly going mainstream as traditional debt stays expensive.
Source: PwC 2025 Mid-Year Tech M&A Outlook
Quote of the week, via Axios Pro Rata:
“SPACs now account for 38% of IPOs, down from 64% in 2021… sponsors with prior experience suggest more stability.”
Got feedback, spicy rumor, or want to argue about market dynamics? Hit reply—I’ll keep it non-binding.
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