Webcast: What M&A Trends Say About AI, Robotics & More

Just because rates have risen and borrowing is a bit more challenging doesn’t mean M&A has stopped. Far from it, as major deals continue to help define key categories from robotics to AI and plenty in between. VettaFi’s recent webcast on the topic, Buying the Future: M&A and Partnerships Reshaping AI, Robotics, and Healthcare, touched on a few key deals and what they might mean for their respective segments.Key Takeaways: Despite rising rates, important M&A activity has continued in key AI, robotics, and health segments. Big moves from the likes of MRVL, AMD, and ABT show that deal-making still has a place in markets. Indices like ROBO, THNQ, and HTEC can help capture those key moves entering 2027. The conversation included insight from VettaFi Head of Robotics and AI Research Zeno Mercer and Senior Research Analyst Rafael Silva. The duo explored the key names to reflect on and what their moves might mean in a year that has seen lots of activity. The year has seen 186 acquisitions across the ROBO, THNQ, and HTEC indices so far. To start, they touched on the growing “inference economy” and the firms preparing for that shift. That inference economy runs up the entire chain from AI to services and infrastructure to robotics. “Companies are gearing up to take on the inference economy… serving technology, whether it’s AI, services, even robotics and automation… Efficiency will increasingly define competitive advantage across the entire value chain, from supply chain optimization to deployment and ongoing operations,” Mercer said. Mercer and Silva underlined deals by Schneider Electric (SBGSY), acquiring PTC for the latter’s upstream design capabilities, AMD (AMD) acquiring Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and the "controversial,” massive merger of Marvell (MRVL) and Lumentum (LITE) in the photonics space. Those stand out among the deals identified by the pair, with Mercer offering particularly notable color regarding AMD’s deal for World Labs. “Why did AMD spend $8.2 billion all stock on a deal for this concept of world models?” Mercer said. “The next phase of artificial intelligence is increasingly in the physics of the real world. So that’s understanding the real world and having the right software and hardware stack to do so.” “AMD is saying, ‘Hey, I want to get into that world,’ he added. “It really expands AMD’s competitiveness on both the hardware and software side to serve that.” In robotics, meanwhile, Amazon (AMZN) moved to acquire Fauna Robotics. The latter, Mercer said, is known for its smaller, pliable robots, more for the home than AMZN’s other factory bots. For more hard application deals, he pointed to Microchip (MCHP) acquiring Hailo and Vorago Technologies for radiation shielding for satellites and potential orbital data centers. Meanwhile, in health deals, Silva emphasized precision diagnostics as a key theme. Some of the notable deals therein include Tempus AI (TEM) acquiring Personalis (PSNL) to improve tumor analysis, and Abbott Laboratories (ABT) acquiring Exact Sciences (EXAS) for colorectal cancer screening and liquid biopsy capabilities. Buyers are putting their cash to work after a period of depressed valuations, Silva explained. Further, he emphasized the so-called patent cliff crisis as a key factor informing the M&A landscape. The space is also seeing a consolidation in the diagnostics space. “Pharma is facing a patent cliff crisis dilemma… in the next five years, around $500 billion worth of revenue is going to be lost due to loss of exclusivity,” Silva said. See more: 3 Reasons HTEC Stands Out Among the Best Health Tech ETFs Investors can use ETFs to gain exposure to the big deals and M&A trends in each of these spaces. For example, the ROBO Global Healthcare Technology & Innovation ETF (HTEC B) provides a useful option. HTEC holds TEM, for example, showing the crossover in AI and healthcare. The fund has returned a healthy 27.35% YTD per ETF Database data. Looking for regular updates? Subscribe here for weekly insights on robotics, AI, and healthcare technology, delivered straight to your inbox. For more news, information, and analysis, visit the Artificial Intelligence Content Hub. vettafi.com is owned by VettaFi LLC (“VettaFi”). VettaFi is the index provider for HTEC, for which it receives an index licensing fee. However, HTEC is not issued, sponsored, endorsed, or sold by VettaFi. VettaFi and its affiliates have no obligation or liability in connection with the issuance, administration, marketing, or trading of HTEC.