Cisco was probably the most lively firm
It’s that point of yr once we look again on the yr’s greatest tech M&A offers. Usually by this time, the same old acquisitive suspects like Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, SAP Oracle and Cisco have taken no less than just a few massive swings. However this yr, solely Cisco took a giant chunk, in the end saying 11 complete offers.
SAP made a pair smaller offers, however Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle largely stayed on the sidelines this yr. The $61 billion Broadcom-VMware deal introduced in Could 2022 lastly closed final month, and Adobe and Figma agreed to finish their $20 billion deal this month, which has been caught in regulatory limbo because it was introduced in September 2022.
It’s not our creativeness that there are fewer offers from the largest gamers. CB Insights reported zero offers in Q3 this yr from Large Tech. Evaluate that with 2019, when there have been 10 such offers in Q3, or with 2020, when there have been eight.
Picture Credit: CB Insights
Maybe the excessive price of borrowing put a damper on the offers we noticed in 2023. Lengthy gone are the times of 2020 when the highest offers totaled $165 billion. This yr it was simply $67.7 billion, the bottom complete we’ve seen since 2019’s all-time low of $40 billion, the second yr we compiled these high deal lists.
It’s price noting {that a} good variety of the offers this yr concerned personal fairness corporations both shopping for corporations or promoting them off at a pleasant revenue.
Possibly the smaller offers involving AI mattered extra, like Atlassian shopping for Loom for $975 million; Salesforce buying Airkit.ai for an undisclosed quantity, one among solely two small acquisitions this yr; or Snowflake nabbing AI search firm Neeva, additionally for an undisclosed quantity.
Regardless, right here’s what the highest 10 enterprise offers appeared like this yr from most cost-effective to most expensive:
