A couple agencies having certainly been flexing like that
The chilling effect may be more around the design tools market specifically
The case of Adobe is a bit different than anti-monopoly movements against other $T because the lack of 'serious' $100B+ market cap competitors here. So while say an adtech can have multiple big buyers in the $100B+ club, it's unlikely to see Autodesk, Corel, Canva, etc to do a $20B purchase here. AFAICT only Microsoft would sensibly be able to put its hat in the ring at high levels, made even more sane b/c the GitHub purchase, but even that was at $7.5B. So if there is no such thing as a decacorn in design tools b/c Adobe can't do big M&A, then VCs are only looking at exits at $1B, and funding + valuations get less frothy vs other markets.
All that starts mattering around Series A or Series B stage, as they look at how much $ they can exit at, and how big of a follow-on round the company can get with the same constraints. If a VC has a fund of > $50M, a pitch that cannot exit at above $B may break their portfolio design.
The chilling effect may be more around the design tools market specifically
The case of Adobe is a bit different than anti-monopoly movements against other $T because the lack of 'serious' $100B+ market cap competitors here. So while say an adtech can have multiple big buyers in the $100B+ club, it's unlikely to see Autodesk, Corel, Canva, etc to do a $20B purchase here. AFAICT only Microsoft would sensibly be able to put its hat in the ring at high levels, made even more sane b/c the GitHub purchase, but even that was at $7.5B. So if there is no such thing as a decacorn in design tools b/c Adobe can't do big M&A, then VCs are only looking at exits at $1B, and funding + valuations get less frothy vs other markets.
All that starts mattering around Series A or Series B stage, as they look at how much $ they can exit at, and how big of a follow-on round the company can get with the same constraints. If a VC has a fund of > $50M, a pitch that cannot exit at above $B may break their portfolio design.