The first half of 2026 demonstrated that strategic urgency continues to outweigh macro uncertainty. Despite geopolitical tensions, evolving trade dynamics, and periods of market volatility, companies around the world accelerated strategic decisions.

As the #1 global banking franchise, we are in ongoing dialogue with CEOs, boards, investors and governments around the world. Across those discussions, five themes consistently emerged that we believe will shape strategic decision-making through the remainder of 2026 and beyond.

Five Strategic Themes Defining the Next Phase of Global Growth

AI has evolved from a technology investment into a global capital cycle with implications extending far beyond the technology sector. While much of the public discussion continues to focus on applications and large language models, a more consequential shift is occurring across the infrastructure required to build and run them.

The scale of investment required is already reshaping global capital markets. AI-related issuers accounted for nearly two-thirds of equity issuance activity1, representing more than $236 billion of capital raised1>. Across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, governments and corporations are accelerating investments in strategic technologies, domestic compute capacity and critical infrastructure to strengthen competitiveness and economic resilience.

The unprecedented scale of required investment is also creating entirely new financing models. Earlier this year, AI cloud provider CoreWeave secured an $8.5 billion financing facility, bringing its total capital commitments over the previous twelve months to approximately $28 billion, underscoring the magnitude of investment required to build AI infrastructure at scale.

The implications extend well beyond traditional technology companies. AI investment is driving demand across power generation, digital infrastructure, advanced computing and strategic supply chains, creating one of the largest capital investment cycles in decades. Increasingly, competitive advantage will belong to organizations that can finance and execute across this ecosystem, not simply those developing AI models.

As AI models become more capable, the competitive advantage will increasingly shift from simply adopting AI to preparing organizations to deploy it securely, responsibly and at enterprise scale. Preparation now extends beyond technology investment to include governance, cybersecurity, data infrastructure, workforce readiness and operational resilience.

Recent frontier model developments, including Anthropic's Mythos, underscore how quickly AI capabilities are advancing. As highlighted in the J.P. Morgan Technology Blog, organizations should prepare not only for AI's ability to accelerate productivity and innovation, but also for the new operational, cyber and governance challenges that increasingly capable systems introduce. AI has the potential to transform software development, scientific discovery and enterprise productivity while simultaneously accelerating the pace at which software vulnerabilities, infrastructure weaknesses and cyber threats are identified.

This shift requires AI strategy to be integrated with enterprise strategy. Boards and management teams can no longer develop AI initiatives in isolation from cyber resilience, enterprise risk management, technology architecture and long-term capital planning. Organizations that establish these capabilities early will be better positioned to scale AI responsibly while maintaining the trust of customers, regulators and investors.

We are already seeing this reflected in strategic discussions with clients globally. Questions have evolved to how organizations prepare their technology architecture, governance frameworks, operating models and long-term capital strategies to deploy AI securely and at scale.

Capital markets remained remarkably resilient despite periods of volatility. In June alone, equity issuance excluding mega transactions reached $109 billion1, making it the second busiest month since the issuance surge of 2021. Including mega transactions, total issuance exceeded $230 billion1, demonstrating the exceptional depth of investor demand for strategic growth opportunities.

Through the first half of the year, total equity issuance reached approximately $650 billion, supported by a record number of large-scale transactions and continued investor appetite for companies deploying capital toward long-term growth initiatives.

Importantly, companies are not raising capital simply because markets are available. They are doing so to fund artificial intelligence investment, infrastructure expansion, strategic acquisitions and business transformation initiatives.

The first half of 2026 also demonstrated that strategic capital formation increasingly requires solutions that bridge traditional boundaries between public markets, private capital and infrastructure investing. Through J.P. Morgan's recently formed Private Capital & Advisory Solutions business, we have observed growing demand for customized financing solutions designed to support companies operating at the intersection of technology, infrastructure and strategic growth.

In June, J.P. Morgan acted as Sole Placement Agent to Runpod on its $100 million primary and secondary capital raise led by Summit Partners, supporting the expansion of the company's AI developer cloud platform, which serves more than one million developers globally. Shortly thereafter, J.P. Morgan acted as Lead Placement Agent to Ionic Digital on its $400 million private placement, providing growth capital to support the expansion of high-performance computing and digital infrastructure assets designed to serve increasingly intensive AI workloads.

Public markets similarly rewarded strategic conviction. J.P. Morgan served as Lead Active Bookrunner on SpaceX's $86 billion IPO and Lead Active Bookrunner on Alphabet's $85 billion dual-tranche equity and convertible offering2, illustrating continued investor support for companies pursuing long-term growth and strategic transformation.

Increasingly, access to flexible pools of capital—and the ability to deploy them quickly—has become a competitive advantage.

In the first half of the year, Global M&A activity reached $3.2 trillion1, as further discussed in our midyear M&A outlook, activity was supported by increased large-scale dealmaking, cross-border activity, and portfolio repositioning. The more important takeaway is not that activity increased, but why companies are pursuing transactions.

Companies are increasingly pursuing transactions to build scale, strengthen resilience, optimize portfolios and accelerate transformation. Strategic transactions are increasingly being used to secure technologies, energy resources, supply chains and operational capabilities that may take years to build organically. This trend has been particularly evident across sectors undergoing structural change, including technology, energy, industrials and infrastructure. Strategic priorities such as artificial intelligence, energy security, industrial policy and supply chain resilience are increasingly influencing transaction decisions.

Cross-border M&A has become one of the clearest expressions of this strategic shift, with volumes rising 63% year over year to $820 billion in the first half, representing more than a quarter of global M&A activity. Rather than slowing investment, geopolitical complexity is reshaping global capital flows, with companies pursuing opportunities through trusted markets and strategic corridors. This is reflected in transactions such as Schroders' sale of its European logistics portfolio to TIAA, where J.P. Morgan advised Schroders and demonstrates how clients continue to pursue transformative cross-border transactions with experienced global advisers.

One of the clearest messages from the first half of the year is that companies are no longer waiting for perfect macroeconomic conditions before pursuing transformational opportunities. Strategic necessity is increasingly proving to be a stronger motivator than market certainty.

Questions surrounding energy security, strategic technologies, supply chains, critical infrastructure and cybersecurity have become central for boards and management teams globally. This has been a key driver behind J.P. Morgan's $1.5 trillion Security & Resiliency Initiative (SRI), which seeks to facilitate, finance and invest in industries critical to economic security and resilience in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

The expansion of SRI globally reinforces what we are hearing consistently from clients: growth strategy and security strategy are becoming increasingly interconnected. Investments in energy infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, defense technologies, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and strategic supply chains are increasingly evaluated through both commercial and geopolitical lenses.

J.P. Morgan has financed and facilitated more than $188 billion through the initiative1, underscoring the scale of investment required to strengthen critical industries and supply chains globally.

As geopolitical fragmentation continues to reshape global markets, organizations that successfully integrate growth, resilience and security into a unified strategic framework may be best positioned to compete over the coming decade.

Looking ahead: Positioned for growth, built for uncertainty

The defining characteristic of the first half of 2026 was not certainty—it was conviction. Companies increasingly made consequential strategic decisions despite geopolitical uncertainty and market volatility, recognizing that waiting carries its own competitive cost.

We believe the organizations best positioned for long-term success will be those that deploy capital thoughtfully, invest in resilience deliberately and act decisively amid uncertainty. Increasingly, competitive advantage will belong to companies with both the conviction and the flexibility to execute.

References

1.

Data as of July 1, 2026

2.

Includes $10bn separately negotiated private placement and $40bn At-the-Market program, expected to begin in Q3 2026

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