TheChek News Flow

When Hewlett Packard Enterprise got government approval to close its acquisition of Juniper Networks this past weekend, the stock soared. More often an acquirer’s stock falls on deal news. But the age of artificial intelligence is changing the equation.

For HPE, the fit is particularly good. Juniper, a networking equipment firm, puts it in a much better spot to compete against Cisco Systems and Nvidia in the market for the high-speed networking equipment that is required in AI data centers.

HPE shares rose 12.6% on Monday, making it the top performing stock in the S&P 500 on the day. The deal officially closed on Wednesday.

Success breeds imitation, and there may be other legacy tech companies looking to the merger market to improve their AI position. I’m not an investment banker, but here are some deals I wouldn’t be surprised to see—and that could get a good reception from the market.

Oracle and C3.ai: Oracle is a prime candidate to add AI to its software through an acquisition.

Oracle has already begun transforming itself for the AI age. With perfect timing in 2020, Oracle began running the Microsoft playbook: Transform from a legacy software maker into a cloud company. It has been moving customers to cloud-based versions of its software with annual subscriptions, while at the same time building large data centers to rent out cloud servers for AI and traditional workloads. In fiscal 2025, revenue from the cloud was up 24%, while the rest of Oracle was flat on the year.

Ironically for a software company, Oracle’s AI play to date has largely been in hardware: AI cloud servers. It could use an AI software merger that, grafted on to existing Oracle offerings, would leverage the mountains of proprietary data customers have in Oracle databases.

Enter C3.ai. C3’s offerings would fit nicely on top of Oracle’s software. C3 has 130 ready-made AI applications tailored for different industries, solving problems and helping to predict outcomes. Today, its customers are clustered in energy, manufacturing, government, and the military.

C3’s revenue grew by 25% to $389 million in fiscal 2025, but it posted a $289 million loss. The culprits were sky-high expenses, 183% of revenue. But in a merger, sales and administrative expenses, which together represented 86% of revenue, would be trimmed heavily once integrated into Oracle’s large sales force and bureaucracy.

After a sharp selloff this year, C3 has a $4.2 billion market capitalization. Oracle could use its $11 billion in cash, or its stock, which trades at a premium to its historical price/earnings ratio for the next 12 months. Paying with cash could hamper Oracle’s plans for data center investment, coming in at $21.2 billion last year, tripled from the year before, and future plans may require more debt, now at $109 billion. In the end, competing capital requirements may be the largest hurdle for this merger.

An Oracle/ C3.ai merger would face one obstacle right off the bat. The company’s founders have a history. C3 CEO Tom Siebel was among Oracle’s early employees, and became a top salesperson. In the early 1990s, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, rejected Siebel’s idea for a new product. Siebel left Oracle and took his idea to form Siebel Systems, which became successful.

As Siebel’s software got traction, a long war of words emerged between the two. In the end, Ellison and Siebel made up enough to agree to an acquisition, with Oracle paying $5.85 billion for Siebel Systems in 2005. Another deal would make sense.

Check Point Software and SentinelOne. Check Point Software Technologies is a pioneer in cybersecurity. Its software builds a wall around corporate networks, but increasingly, workers are doing things outside those walls, like working from home or using cloud applications. Check Point also has a cloud-security product that is mature and integrated with its network security.

SentinelOne’s strength is AI-driven “endpoint security,” proactively protecting employee devices no matter what network they are connected to. Check Point has its own endpoint solution, but SentinelOne’s is a more popular product.

Check Point grew revenue by 6% last year, a much slower pace than 20 years ago, but it also generates a lot of free cash flow, which has largely gone to share repurchases. Check Point has reduced its share count by 55% since 2005, becoming a classic “value” play. Now it could turn back to growth.

SentinelOne is a much younger company, growing smartly. Revenue rose by 32% last fiscal year, but, like C3.ai, it took a huge loss, with total expenses at 140% of revenue. Some 82% of its revenue went to sales and administrative costs, the kind of expenses that would be greatly reduced after a merger, also thanks to Check Point’s larger scale and existing sales force.

SentinelOne has a market capitalization of $6.8 billion, and the stock is down 12% over the past year, versus a gain of 12.5% for S&P 500.

The bet here is that a combined offering covering network, cloud, and endpoint security would allow Check Point to upsell its existing base of over 100,000 customers. Check Point had just $1.5 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of March. The deal could be all-stock, or Check Point, which has no debt, could borrow to finance the purchase.

As with any deal, integration is expensive, so shareholders would need to be patient. It could be worth the wait.

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

Other news:

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

M&A news:

Other news:

The Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund is teaming with New York developer Related Cos.

Saudi Arabia’s government fund is taking a two-thirds stake in a site for a planned Manhattan skyscraper, the latest sign that foreign investors are flocking back to New York’s rapidly recovering real-estate market.

The Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund is teaming with Related Cos., which has said it is planning to build a 1,200 foot tower on the site. The New York developer and the Saudis own this site one block from Central Park, which was purchased last year for more than $600 million.

Related initially planned a mixed-use project there with residential, retail and a hotel. But more recently the firm said it has been considering an office building instead to take advantage of the strong demand among businesses for top-quality space in the city.

The overall cost for the site and development is expected to be more than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The Saudi fund’s final contribution is still being determined, but PIF has already invested about $200 million, these people said.

Foreign investors this year have been returning to New York City’s commercial-property market, which is the largest, most liquid and one of the top performers in the U.S.

U.S. property developments and investments slowed considerably early on during the pandemic. They were hit again after interest rates soared in 2022, pushing down values. Foreign investor interest evaporated.

But lately investment in New York has been recovering as more workers return to the office, providing a new lift for neighboring businesses. Manhattan’s office leasing during the first half of the year surpassed the same period in some years before Covid-19’s outbreak, according to data firm CoStar Group.

New York City apartment rents are at all-time highs—boosting the mayoral candidacy of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who recently won the Democratic primary while pledging a rent freeze. The city’s visitor numbers are just below record highs.

Eastdil Secured has seen the increase in foreign activity first hand. The real-estate brokerage and investment bank has $12 billion worth of New York real-estate deals completed or under way in 2025, according to Chief Executive Roy March.

“Virtually every one of them has some level of foreign capital involved,” he said.

Foreign investors purchased over $2.1 billion of Manhattan commercial property in the first quarter of 2025 and the last quarter of 2024 combined, according to data firm MSCI. That total was five times as much as the same six-month period two years earlier.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund has assets of about $1 trillion, making it one of the world’s largest investors. It is one of the major overseas funds returning to New York.

The fund has a close relationship with Related, best known for its sprawling Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s west side. In 2020, the Saudi fund made a debt investment in Related that is convertible into a 15% equity stake. Since then the two have consulted closely on numerous real-estate projects.

Saudi’s Public Investment Fund has historically been a relatively small player in real estate outside of Saudi Arabia—instead directing its property-focused dollars toward domestic megaprojects meant to transform the country.

But in the past few years, it has planted its flag on a number of high-profile global properties and brands. Last year it took a 40% stake in Selfridges, a high-end U.K. department-store group that boasts a grand flagship by London’s Hyde Park.

In 2022, it joined with other funds to put $900 million into the ultraluxury hotelier Aman, and in 2023 bought a 49% stake in the upmarket hotel chain Rocco Forte.