KPMG LLP published its second-quarter 2026 technology, media, and telecom mergers note on Saturday. [1] The issue date is August 8. [1] The data run through June 30. [1] A Saturday publication of last quarter's counts is not a deal close. It is the print.
The quarter produced 1,332 TMT deals, down 13.2 percent from the first quarter and 8.5 percent from a year earlier. [1] Deal value was $225.6 billion, down 50.4 percent quarter on quarter but up 20.6 percent year on year. [1] Volume fell. Value held on the year because a smaller group of strategic transactions carried the number. That is the Saturday finding. It is not a boom.
Strategic buyers dominated. Their deal value dropped 50.2 percent from the first quarter but rose 52.1 percent on the year. [1] Private-equity deal value fell 52.9 percent quarter on quarter and 58.9 percent year on year. [1] KPMG called the sponsor quiet a historic low. [1] Hamstrung by the cost of debt and a bid-ask gap, many PE firms sat out rather than exit at marked-to-market prices. [1] A briefcase left on the scale is the image. It is also the fact.
Technology still carried the value. Tech deal value rose 49.3 percent year on year even as volume slipped 8.5 percent. [1] Acquisition valuations, KPMG said, fell to their lowest level since 2013. [1] Media deal volume declined 21.6 percent quarter on quarter and 14.9 percent year on year. [1] Telecom was the only TMT subsector to post volume growth both sequentially and year on year. [1] Those are sector clocks. They are not Saturday announcements of SpaceX and Anysphere, or Fox and Roku. Those names sit in the report's exhibit list as prior-quarter announcements. [1] Do not commission them as today's news.
Anuj Bahal, KPMG's U.S. national TMT deal advisory and strategy leader, recanted the panic. "We may have been asking the wrong question," he said. [1] "The issue was never whether core SaaS would survive AI. What's becoming clearer is that AI is redefining the interface layer, while core systems of record remain intact. The strategic constraint has shifted from software applications to compute capacity." [1] That sentence is the Saturday recantation. It is also the split.
This paper's Saturday feature still files software firms burning old products as AI eats SaaS. The Journal, via The Currency, sells a funeral. KPMG's same-day note says the shock has settled and the premium has moved to infrastructure, proprietary data, and monetization pipes. [1] A reader who only watches the feature page will think application software is already dead. A reader who only watches the deal report will think the panic is already over. Saturday printed both.
KPMG's implication is blunt. Paying for infrastructure, data, or audience control can be justified. Paying for a story without a Day 1 operating model cannot. [1] The most dangerous assumption, the note says, is that AI, streaming, or connectivity exposure automatically converts into margin expansion. [1] Hardware and infrastructure profitability, it argues, are surging while software margins compress. [1] That inversion is a thesis. It is not a close.
Deal accounts will treat $225.6 billion as proof the boom never left. The completed Saturday record is 1,332 deals, a year-on-year value rise against a volume drop, PE down by more than half, and a consultant saying the wrong question was survival. That is a deal-count print. It is not a tombstone for SaaS, and it is not a new megadeal.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco