AI dealmaking surges, from roll-ups to Anthropic's compute push — 5/7/2026

Summary

This CNBC episode covers the surge in AI dealmaking, including a venture-backed rollup taking American Express Global Business Travel private, major private equity partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, and a significant compute deal between Anthropic and SpaceX. Interviews with Morgan Stanley's Mandell Crawley, Long Lake's Alex Taubman, GC's Madhu Namburi, and Anthropic's Boris Cherny and Cat Wu explore how AI transformation is reshaping corporate strategies, founder sentiment, and software development productivity.

• AI dealmaking accelerates: Long Lake takes Amex GBT private; OpenAI and Anthropic announce large PE partnerships.
• Anthropic partners with SpaceX for 220,000 Nvidia GPUs at the Colossus 1 data center.
• Morgan Stanley's founder survey shows 95% of founders see AI as critical, but only 23% feel supported—highlighting a deployment gap.
• AI roll-ups target non-tech services industries with proprietary AI platforms to drive growth.
• Anthropic's Claude Code now writes 100% of its own code; engineers manage agents that manage agents.
• Productivity gains in software development are described as a 'printing press moment' for innovation.