Brenon Daly directs the financial analysis of the Market Insight and M&A KnowledgeBase products at 451 Research from S&P Global Energy Horizons. He is responsible for all financial coverage within those product lines, as well as supporting investment- and acquisition-related activity by investment banking and private capital clients. Brennon arrived at S&P Global through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research. Before joining 451 Research in mid-2006, Brenon worked at research boutique for technology-focused hedge funds, as well as trading equity and options on his own book. Brenon began his career in 1991 as a founding reporter at the first English-language newspaper in the former Eastern Bloc. Brenon moved to Vienna in 1995 to run the local bureau for United Press International before taking on an analyst position with the Economist Group, where he researched and wrote reports for The Economist Intelligence Unit and the regional publication of The Economist. In addition to earning a degree from the University of Kansas, Brenon studied at the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria).
For M&A in the cybersecurity space, generative AI giveth and it taketh away — especially for the publicly traded biggies. Early on in the trend, new threats gave security vendors the excuse they needed to go shopping at record rates. More recently, however, AI has gone from promise to peril, knocking these high-profile acquirers out of the market.
AI hasn't created tech's recent weakness on Wall Street as much as it has simply exposed it. The stocks of fat-and-happy software vendors were the first to get smacked by an indiscriminate wave of selling by investors. Now, the AI threat is nipping at cybersecurity, a sector that has been revealed as much more of a market laggard than leader.
Every technology generation has its disruptors and its disruptees. In the software industry's earlier transition to SaaS, vendors caught out by the move to subscriptions didn't suffer all that much. That's not how software's AI era is starting. If the shift to SaaS was mostly a bloodless evolution, AI agents have sparked a bloody revolution.
Technologists worried about an uprising by bots that destroys humanity have had their fears at least partly confirmed by recent decimation of app vendors on Wall Street. But investors' focus on what AI might do to enterprise software is only one side of the dystopian story. The sector's historically rich valuations also figure into the recent meltdown.
Generative AI's massive investment phase is stretching into its fourth year, with no signs of a spending slowdown. The unending gusher of required cash is forcing the main model providers into an ever-expanding search for new funding. Their next stop: Wall Street.
Lingering uncertainty about AI's impact on the finances and operations across the tech industry continues to push major companies to the sidelines of the M&A market. Spending on deals in January slumped to its lowest monthly total in a year. Not that the sluggish beginning necessarily sets the tone for the rest of the year.
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