Elon Musk recently bought Twitter for $44 billion. And this acquisition made its place in history, with it, becoming the second-most expensive and second-largest tech acquisition of all times. While mergers and acquisitions are undertaken to increase business, increase market share, acquire new technology or expertise, many of them fail owing to a number of reasons like misvaluation, high recovery costs, limited owner involvement etc.
There is a lot of money and time involved in these processes. Some benefit immensely, while some live to see the end of the road. Here’s listing the biggest tech acquisitions in history, in no particular order, that will surprise you with their valuations and other details.
1. Dell acquired EMC
2015 saw the largest tech acquisition ever. American computer company Dell was looking to move away from the server business and get deeper into the enterprise, with private cloud computing and storage. It acquired EMC for $67 billion, thereby merging its enterprise personal computer, server, and mobile businesses with EMC’s enterprise storage business.
2. CenturyLink acquired Level 3 Communications
The third-largest telecommunications company in United States, CenturyLink, acquired Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications and internet service provider company, for $34 billion in cash and stock in 2017. With this deal, CenturyLink was seeking to expand its reach in the business communication market, thereby competing with the likes of AT&T and Verizon.
3. Salesforce acquired Slack
Customer Relationship Management leader Salesforce, acquired Slack technologies, Inc for $27.7 billion in 2020. This business process has gotten Slack to become the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360.
4. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn
Microsoft has acquired many tech companies over the years. One major acquisition by Microsoft has been that of LinkedIn. Microsoft’s $26.2-billion acquisition of LinkedIn, aimed to grow the professional networking site and integrate it with Microsoft’s enterprise software, like Office 365.
5. Facebook acquired WhatsApp
February 2014, saw the acquisition, which at that time was a massive business phenomenon. Getting access to more than 450 million users, Facebook bought WhatsApp at $19 billion.
6. IBM acquires RedHat
Best known for its Linux server operating system, RedHat, was acquired by IBM, in 2018, for $34 billion. This strategically put IBM ahead in hybrid cloud solutions, and also had it competing against the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, that use proprietary platforms in their public cloud operations.
7. Amazon acquired Whole Foods
Amazon acquired organic grocery chain Whole Foods in August 2017. It spent $13.7 billion to buy this 40-year-old supermarket chain known for its organic merchandise and, at times, its sky-high prices.
Part from these, there have been many other notable acquisitions made by tech firms. Like for instance Walmart bought Indian brand Flipkart in 2018 for $16 billion, Intel bought MobileEye for $15 billion, Softbank buying ARM in 2016 for $31 billion.
