What’s the biggest tech acquisition in history?
Choose your answer and the correct choice will be revealed.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has officially been completed, making it the largest tech industry buyout in history at $68.7 billion. The deal, which overcame significant antitrust hurdles in both the U.S. and abroad, not only represents Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date but also significantly reshapes the video game landscape by bringing popular franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush under Microsoft’s umbrella.
This monumental deal surpasses the previous record held by Dell’s acquisition of enterprise storage company EMC for $67 billion in cash and stock, which was announced in 2015 and completed in 2016.
In third place is Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now rebranded as X), which he ultimately purchased in October 2022 for the originally agreed-upon amount of $44 billion after some public back and forth, taking the company private.
Nvidia’s failed attempt to acquire Arm would have taken a place in this list. The $40 billion transaction would have marked one of the biggest semiconductor purchases in the multi-decade history of the chip business. The amazing irony was that the deal didn’t involve any chips at all. Years prior, Softbank had purchased Arm for nearly $32 billion. After the failed saga of Nvidia trying to buy Arm, the position of both companies remain stronger than ever – especially Nvidia’s.
Fourth place goes to the merger of renowned chipmaker Broadcom with rival Avago Technologies in a cash and stock deal valued at $37 billion. In 2020, AMD reached an agreement to purchase FPGA specialist Xilinx in an all-stock deal valued at $35 billion.
To round out the top acquisitions in tech history, IBM acquired open-source software developer Red Hat for $34 billion. The deal took place in 2018, after IBM and Red Hat had been partners on enterprise-grade Linux for over 20 years.
Other high-profile acquisitions that have fallen off the top rankings include Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016. Also, HP’s takeover of Compaq in 2002 which was virtually tied with Facebook’s buyout of WhatsApp (now Meta Platforms), both being around $19 billion exchanges. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola and sold it to Lenovo two years later for $2.9 billion – minus all those mobile patents they actually wanted for its Android ambitions.
You may be wondering why AOL’s buyout of Time Warner isn’t among the answers, considering it was a larger deal than any of the above. AOL paid $106 billion for Time Warner in 2000 – it was originally valued at $165 billion but later reduced. However, that acquisition is typically excluded from tech lists because AOL and Time Warner are considered media companies.
