M&A in the Americas isn't just changing. It's reshaping. The third quarter of 2025 saw it hit a four-year-peak, in terms of value anyway. But as for deal volumes? Open the Deal Drivers: Americas Q3 2025 report, and you'll see some decade lows. 

So, way more money, yet far fewer deals. It's not just down to economic uncertainty; something far more interesting is going on. Our familiar dealmaking universe is warping under the combined tug of two gravitational forces: AI and energy, in particular the transition to renewables.

This pair of behemoths are between them redefining where value is created and, more importantly, who captures it.

Chasing the long vision

With the Federal Reserve's rate cuts restoring some liquidity, we might have expected deal volumes to follow. That this hasn't happened yet is a case of missing confidence, not so much economic as strategic. To put it bluntly, dealmakers are asking, ‘Will this thing I’m buying really pull its weight in the future?’

As any new car buyer knows, shiny purchases have a way of rusting fast. So today’s dealmakers want gold – if not literal gold, then high-value strategic assets that won’t depreciate any time soon, and which can offer long-term resilience. That means the right technology, data, and energy infrastructure.

Because M&A is no longer merely chasing growth. It’s laying the foundations of the next economy, sacrificing some jam today for lots more jam tomorrow.

The great innovation consolidation

Technology (and AI in particular) is becoming the One Ring to Rule Them All – whoever controls it best, beats the rest. The favored approach is ‘buy over build’, acquiring existing tech rather than playing catch-up in an already hectic race. Consequently, big corporations and private equity alike are chasing the tastiest tech assets – targeting semiconductors, cloud platforms, and data infrastructure as well as AI innovations and IP.

This is highlighted in some of the landmark deals covered in the Deal Drivers Q3 report:

• The Electronic Arts buyout (US$56.6bn), demonstrating confidence in AI-driven gaming
• The SpaceX acquisition of EchoStar spectrum (US$17bn) – a major comms infrastructure power play
• The Anthropic stake sales to multiple investors, which underscores AI’s cross-sector appeal

Although the bulk of this activity is happening where you’d expect, in the West and especially California, it’s also overspilling into the Midwest, where a fresh crop of data centers are rapidly turning the region into an infrastructure hotspot. It’s clear that AI isn’t just another trend, but well on the way to being the new industrial policy.

Power grab

That emerging policy comes with a catch. AI is notoriously power-hungry, and is exploding precisely at the time when industry was meant to be ‘cutting down’ on traditional energy sources. But in M&A every crisis is a potential opportunity, and the stampede for AI is triggering a parallel rush for clean energy.

The value of the EMU sector in Q3 doubled year-on-year, a 106% boost driven by renewables, LNG, and grid assets. Notable deals across the Americas included:

• The Anglo American–Teck merger (Canada, US$23.6bn), securing the critical minerals needed for renewable energy.
• Brookfield & QIA in Isagen (Colombia, US$1.5bn), which can be seen as a long-term bet on renewable stability.
• Iberdrola deepening its control of Neoenergia (Brazil), to reinforce its LatAm clean energy footprint.

Momentum has been spurred by the onshoring and decarbonization incentives in both the US and Canada, and the streamlined permitting for renewables in Chile and Colombia.

As with AI, energy deals are evolving from their old cyclical form into a new, structural model: building the backbone of the latest tech revolution, while at the same time laying the foundations of a wider low-carbon economy.

A new symbiosis

AI needs energy to thrive, while its rise also creates a wealth of avenues for energy to expand and evolve. For example, it’s massively more efficient to transmit data than it is to transfer energy, meaning that data centers can be located close to energy sources that would otherwise be too remote to be economical. It also means that AI can benefit from renewable resources that may be too unpredictable for some industrial or domestic uses (e.g. solar and wind).

AI is also helping to optimize energy grids, materials, and efficiency. Meanwhile, energy infrastructure underpins the growth of new data centers (e.g. in Texas and Georgia). These two capital-intensive, data-heavy, and geopolitically strategic sectors are now joined at the hip. For dealmakers, this growing overlap between tech, infrastructure, and utilities means new alliances, hybrid valuations, and the need for more cross-sector expertise.

In the Deal Drivers report we see both the US and Canada blazing a trail here. From California’s AI boom to Alberta’s LNG buildout, the new economy is scaling at both ends of the spectrum. Meanwhile Latin America, though smaller in terms of volumes, is still rich in strategic value, with Chile, Colombia, and Mexico emerging as supply-side partners in the cleantech ecosystem.

It's all about strategy

Does this shotgun wedding of energy and AI help explain the market’s recent strange mood? It might well. The M&A game is changing, with a lot more to play for in 2026 and beyond.

The big money is focused on reshaping the landscape, and rewriting the rule book for tomorrow. We can expect a 2026 dominated by convergence-driven M&A, in which strategic leverage is as significant as monetary value. The winners in 2025 were those positioning around structural change, and this is likely to continue.

Deal volumes will return, it’s just a question of when. Understanding what’s been happening with AI and energy, and why, will be the key to identifying the best opportunities in the brave new world now emerging.