Scale & Strategy

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​HubSpot​

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This is Scale & Strategy, the newsletter that doubles as your own personal team of business obsessed researchers, tasked with hunting down daily insights.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• OpenAI is basically giving ChatGPT away to the U.S. government
• Wall Street’s Summer Break Is Cancelled

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OpenAI is basically giving ChatGPT away to the U.S. government

OpenAI just dropped a $1/year deal for every U.S. federal agency to get ChatGPT Enterprise — full access to advanced models, beefed-up security, the works.

The fine print (that’s actually big print):

• This is through a partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration, the government’s giant procurement arm.
• Agencies also get 60 days of unlimited use for the new shiny stuff — like Deep Research — at no extra cost.
• The sales pitch? Cut the red tape, kill the paperwork, make services faster, easier, and more reliable.
• They’re even spinning up a private “government user community” with custom training so bureaucrats don’t get lost in the UI.

Why it matters: This isn’t just a cheap trial — it’s OpenAI digging deep into government workflows. And if history’s any guide, Anthropic, Google, and every other GSA-approved player will now be tripping over themselves to offer Uncle Sam equally aggressive deals.

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Wall Street’s Summer Break Is Cancelled​
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The busiest M&A week since 2021 has bankers and lawyers ditching vacations and scrambling to close deals.

Late summer is usually dead quiet for dealmaking. Not this year. A sudden wave of big-ticket mergers has calendars packed, beach houses empty, and families wondering when Dad’s coming home from “just one more pitch.”

Last week alone saw more U.S. M&A volume than any week in the past three years, per LSEG. The headline grabber: Union Pacific’s $71.5B takeover of Norfolk Southern, creating the country’s first coast-to-coast rail network. Other big moves included:

• Alphabet buying Wiz
• Global Payments grabbing Worldpay
• Constellation Energy snapping up Calpine
• Palo Alto Networks’ $25B CyberArk deal
• Baker Hughes’ $13B buy of Chart Industries

What’s fueling the frenzy? A sturdy-enough economy, rate-cut expectations, trade pacts out of D.C., and a White House that’s more open to deal “remedies” than blockades. Plus, let’s be real — banker bonuses are tied to deal fees, and 2022’s pay cuts still sting.

Some names aren’t waiting to see where the chips fall: Kraft Heinz is weighing a breakup, Kenvue is exploring “strategic alternatives,” LVMH is in talks to sell Marc Jacobs, and more bank mergers are on the table.

The vibe inside top shops like Goldman, JPM, and BofA: “Strike now, before the window closes.”
One Centerview exec summed it up: “There’s a lot of dialogue on big transactions that were just a glimmer in people’s eyes. This might be our busiest August in years.”

Even with jitters over getting mega-deals past the finish line, the mood is euphoric. One adviser marked a win with a helicopter to the Hamptons and a $950 bottle at Surf Lodge. Others? They’re already back in the office, hunting the next big one.

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