In a slow year for enterprise tech M&A, there were few standout deals

Cisco was nan astir progressive company

It’s that time of twelvemonth erstwhile we look backmost astatine nan year’s biggest tech M&A deals. Typically by this time, nan accustomed acquisitive suspects for illustration Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, SAP Oracle and Cisco person taken astatine slightest a fewer large swings. But this year, only Cisco took a large bite, yet announcing 11 full deals.

SAP made a mates smaller deals, but Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle mostly stayed connected nan sidelines this year. The $61 cardinal Broadcom-VMware deal announced successful May 2022 yet closed past month, and Adobe and Figma agreed to extremity their $20 cardinal woody this month, which has been stuck successful regulatory limbo since it was announced successful September 2022.

It’s not our imagination that location are less deals from nan biggest players. CB Insights reported zero deals successful Q3 this twelvemonth from Big Tech. Compare that pinch 2019, erstwhile location were 10 specified deals successful Q3, aliases pinch 2020, erstwhile location were eight.

Perhaps nan precocious costs of borrowing put a damper connected nan deals we saw successful 2023. Long gone are nan days of 2020 erstwhile nan apical deals totaled $165 billion. This twelvemonth it was conscionable $67.7 billion, nan lowest full we’ve seen since 2019’s all-time debased of $40 billion, nan 2nd twelvemonth we compiled these apical woody lists.

It’s worthy noting that a bully number of nan deals this twelvemonth progressive backstage equity firms either buying companies aliases trading them disconnected astatine a bully profit.

Maybe nan smaller deals involving AI mattered more, for illustration Atlassian buying Loom for $975 million; Salesforce acquiring Airkit.ai for an undisclosed amount, 1 of only 2 mini acquisitions this year; aliases Snowflake nabbing AI hunt institution Neeva, besides for an undisclosed amount.

Regardless, here’s what nan apical 10 endeavor deals looked for illustration this twelvemonth from cheapest to astir costly: