Cisco was the most active company
It's that moment of the year when we take a look at the biggest tech mergers and acquisitions of the year. Typically at this point, the usual greedy suspects like Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, SAP Oracle, and Cisco have made at least a few big moves. But this year, only Cisco took a big step and ultimately announced 11 deals in total.
SAP made a couple of smaller deals, but Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle mostly stayed on the sidelines this year. The $61 billion Broadcom-VMware deal announced in May 2022 finally closed last month, and Adobe and Figma agreed to end their $20 billion deal this month, which has been stuck in regulatory limbo. since it was announced in September 2022.
It is not our imagination that there are fewer agreements by the most important players. tech-ma-trends-q3-2023/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>CB Insights reported zero deals in the third quarter of this year by Big tech. Compare that to 2019, when there were 10 such deals in the third quarter, or 2020, when there were eight.
Image credits: CB Perspectives
Perhaps the high cost of borrowing held back the deals we saw in 2023. Gone are the days of 2020 when major deals totaled $165 billion. This year it was just $67.7 billion, the lowest total we've seen since the all-time low of $40 billion in 2019, the second year we compiled these lists of top deals.
It's worth noting that a good number of deals this year involved private equity firms either buying companies or selling them at a tidy profit.
Perhaps smaller ai-related deals mattered more, like Loom's $975 million purchase of Atlassian; Salesforce acquires Airkit.ai for undisclosed amount, one of only two small acquisitions this year; o Snowflake nabbed ai search firm Neeva, also for an undisclosed amount.
Anyway, here's what the top 10 business deals looked like this year, from cheapest to most expensive:
