ahead of world economic forumAnnual meeting held in Davos, Switzerland, wealth Linked to Global Co-Head of Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs, Kim Posnetfor her vision of the most pressing issues in business in 2026.
one wealth most powerful womanPosnet is one of the bank’s top dealmakers and also serves as vice chairman of the firmwide Client Franchise Committee and a member of the Management Committee. She previously served as global head of technology, media and telecommunications, as well as several other executive roles, including head of investment banking services and OneGS. she and wealth About how she sees the current business environment and the most important developments in 2026 in terms of artificial intelligence, the IPO market and M&A activity. Goldman Sachs has been the world’s No. 1 M&A advisory firm for the past 20 years, including 2025, and Posnett is a star contributor, including Amazon,Uber, eBay, etsiand X.
- Coming to Davos, how would you describe the current environment?
As the global business community gathers in Davos, we are seeing powerful catalysts driving M&A and capital markets activity. The fundamental drivers accelerating business activity continue to improve in the second half of 2025 and remain strong in 2026. A constructive macro backdrop, including artificial intelligence as a growth catalyst across industries and geographies, is increasing CEO and board confidence, and our clients are looking to drive strategies and financing activities focused on scale, growth and innovation. As AI moves from a theoretical catalyst to an industrial driver, it is setting a new set of priorities for boardrooms that are top of mind for every client we serve as they enter 2026.
- What are the most important AI developments in 2025? What should we expect in 2026?
2025 is the year when artificial intelligence explodes. We have stepped out of the era of artificial intelligence experimentation and entered the era of artificial intelligence industrialization. We are witnessing major technological and structural breakthroughs in models, agents, infrastructure, and governance. Just a year ago, in January 2025, DeepSeek launched DeepSeek-R1 Inference models challenge the “moat” of closed-source models by demonstrating that world-class inference can be achieved with fully open-source models and radical cost efficiencies. That same month, Stargate, a historic $500 billion public-private joint venture including OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle ——Marks the beginning of the “gigawatt era” of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Just two months later, in March 2025, xAI’s acquisition of X signaled a new strategy in which social platforms could serve as massive real-time data engines for model training. By the end of the year, with the launch of OpenAI, we saw a significant improvement in model capabilities almost simultaneously GPT-5.1 Professional EditionGoogle’s Gemini 3and human Claude 4.5, All of this improves deep thinking and reasoning, pushes the boundaries of multimodality, and sets the standard for autonomous agent workflows.
In the enterprise, the conversation has matured from “What is artificial intelligence?” Just a few years ago, the question was, “How fast can we deploy?” We have moved beyond the pilot phase and into a period of deep structural transformation. For companies around the world, artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the way work is done. Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a feature; it is the foundation for new productivity and operating levers. Forward-thinking companies are no longer using AI just for automation; they are building agent workflows as force multipliers for their most valuable asset: their human capital. As enterprises move from “AI-assisted” tasks to “AI-led” processes, we are starting to see the first real, measurable return on investment, fundamentally changing the cost and speed of execution across the organization.
Of course, all of this progress is not without regulatory and policy complexities. As AI reaches consumer, enterprise and sovereign scale, we see global policy divergence that boards must navigate with caution. In the United States, recent executive orders—such as the January 2025 “Remove Barriers” order and the subsequent “Genesis Mission”—mark a decisive shift toward prioritizing U.S. AI dominance by rolling back previous reporting requirements and accelerating infrastructure development. In stark contrast, the European Union’s EU Artificial Intelligence Act is now fully in force, imposing strict regulations on “high-risk” systems and general-purpose models. Meanwhile, the UK has adopted a hybrid model of “supporting innovation”: promoting “security as a service” on the one hand, while also investing billions in national computing and “artificial intelligence growth zones” to close the gap between innovation and public trust. For our clients, the challenge is no longer just compliance; it’s strategic planning and arbitrage – deciding where to build, where to deploy, who to partner with, what to buy and how to maintain a global advantage in a fragmented regulatory environment.
As we enter 2026, the pace of innovation is not only accelerating; It forces every global enterprise to rethink business processes and capital allocation.
- What is your view on the market’s prospects given the expectations and expectations for IPOs this year? What are its characteristics?
We are entering an IPO “megacycle,” which we expect will be defined by unprecedented deal volume and IPO size. Unlike the dot-com wave of the late 1990s, which saw hundreds of small-cap listings, or even the 2020-2021 surge driven by a slew of multi-billion-dollar IPOs, the next IPO cycle will feature greater volume and the market’s largest-ever deals. It is characterized by the public debut of institutionally established giants as well as completely disruptive, fast-growing and capital-consuming innovators. Over the past decade, some companies have stayed private longer and raised unprecedented amounts of private capital, allowing a group of businesses to reach valuations and scale of operations never before seen in private markets. We’re no longer talking about “unicorns” – we’re talking about multinational companies that have the gravity and scale of a Fortune 500 company when they go public. For investors, the reopening of the IPO window will provide the opportunity to invest in the world’s most transformative and fastest-growing companies and provide a generational reweighting of public indexes.
In 2018, the five largest publicly traded technology companies were valued at a combined $3.3 trillion. apple About $1 trillion. Today, the five largest publicly traded technology companies are valued at $18.3 trillion, more than five and a half times their market capitalization. What’s more, the 10 largest private technology companies were valued at $300 billion in 2018. Today, the 10 largest private technology companies are valued at $3 trillion, more than 10 times their value. These are iconic, generational companies with unprecedented private market capitalizations, some of which have unprecedented capital needs, which should result in an unprecedented IPO market.
Each company has its own goals in terms of IPO timing, size and structure, which will affect if, how and when they enter the market, but the overall potential is huge. During the last wave of IPOs, Goldman Sachs was at the center of IPO innovation by leading initial direct listings and auction IPOs, and we expect more innovation in this upcoming wave. The current combination of constructive macro backdrop and groundbreaking technological advances is more than just reopening the window; it is creating a generational opportunity for investors to participate in the companies that will define global business for the next century.
- Will the explosion of M&A activity in 2025 herald another boom year?
Entering 2026, the global M&A market has transitioned from a year of recovery (M&A volume reached US$5.1 trillion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 44%) to a year of boldness and strategic significance. While the second half of 2025 will be defined by a “thaw” – driven by a constructive regulatory environment, the Fed’s easing cycle and normalizing valuations – the year ahead will be defined by ambition.
We have entered an era of broad, bold and ambitious strategic deals: transformative, high-conviction deals where industry leaders are no longer consolidating just for scale but are also aggressively acquiring the strategic assets, artificial intelligence capabilities and digital infrastructure that will define the next decade. CEO and board confidence has reached its highest point in years as they recognize that stagnation is the greatest risk in an AI-industrialized economy. The quality and pace of our strategic discussions with clients demonstrate that the world’s most influential companies across industries and geographies are ready to deploy their balance sheets and public currencies to redraw the competitive landscape.
Artificial Intelligence is no longer an isolated technology trend; it is a horizontal disruptor that amplifies interest in strategic M&A across various economic sectors. While boardroom conversations have moved from theoretical “AI pilots” to large-scale capital deployments, the speed of technology is currently outpacing traditional governance frameworks. Boards of directors and management teams are being asked to make billions of dollars of high-stakes decisions in an environment where historical benchmarks often no longer apply. In this environment, M&A has become a tool for strategic leaps—enabling companies to act defensively to protect their core businesses and offensively to secure the critical infrastructure and talent needed for non-linear growth. Success in 2026 will depend on strategic conviction: the ability to translate this unprecedented complexity into clear, actionable strategy and competitive advantage.
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape corporate M&A strategies, we are also seeing financial sponsors return to center stage. Sponsor M&A activity accelerated dramatically in 2025—M&A deal volume surged by more than 50% as the bid-ask spread between buyers and sellers began to narrow, financing markets became more constructive, and innovative deal structures enabled private equity firms to pursue larger and more complex transactions. The global sponsor dry powder amount reaches US$1 trillion, and the unrealized sponsor portfolio company scale exceeds US$4 trillion, and LP’s capital return pressure continues to escalate. Moving into 2026, financial sponsors will face a dual focus: executing privatizations and strategic divestitures to deploy new capital while leveraging reopened monetization paths (from IPOs to secondary sales to strategic sales) to meet liquidity needs. Sponsors will enter 2026 with greater flexibility as monetization paths reopen and valuation gaps narrow, enhanced by a healthier macroeconomic backdrop and improving liquidity conditions.
This Q&A is based on an email conversation with Kim Posnett. This article has been edited for length and clarity.