Biggest technology acquisitions of 2020

Last yr marked a slight lower in international expertise M&A exercise from the blockbuster yr that was 2018 – when SAP purchased Qualtrics for $8 billion, IBM acquired Red Hat for a staggering $33 billion and Broadcom picked up CA Technologies for $18.9 billion in money.As of the top of Q3 2019, expertise M&A offers value $245 billion had been introduced globally, marking a lower of 25% year-on-year in response to GlobalData.Which mergers and acquisitions does 2020 have in retailer? If January alone is something to go by, there can be no slowing of main offers throughout the business, with safety already proving to be a sizzling space.Here are the largest expertise acqusitions of 2020 to date, in reverse chronological order:8 September: Progress Software acquires Chef for $220MIn September, Progress Software introduced it was buying the infrastructure-as-code pioneer Chef for $220 million in money.“This acquisition perfectly aligns with our growth strategy and meets the requirements that we’ve previously laid out: a strong recurring revenue model, technology that complements our business, a loyal customer base and the ability to leverage our operating model and infrastructure to run the business more efficiently,” CEO Yogesh Gupta stated in a press release.“Chef and Progress share a vision for the future of DevSecOps and Progress will provide the scale to further drive Chef’s platform forward and deliver additional value to our customers,” stated Chef CEO Barry Crist.The price ticket reveals that Chef has had a tough time sustaining its early momentum within the extremely aggressive open supply DevOps tooling area. When it final raised funding in 2015 the corporate was valued at $360 million.13 July: HPE picks up Silver Peak for $925 millionHewlett Packard Enterprise made an enormous dedication to the SD-WAN (software-defined networking in a large space community) market in July when it introduced its intention to purchase Silver Peak for $925 million.Founded in 2004, Silver Peak specialises in WAN expertise and can be a part of HPE’s networking model Aruba.”Our Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform is highly complementary to HPE’s industry-defining SD-Branch offerings and it will become the centerpiece of Aruba’s WAN edge strategy,” Silver Peak CEO David Hughes wrote in a weblog put up. “Upon closing the deal, we will become part of HPE’s Aruba division, bringing together the industry’s most comprehensive end-to-end secure networking portfolio from the data centre to the campus, to branch and remote worker locations.”8 July: SUSE acquires RancherSUSE, the enterprise Linux specialist, is doubling down on Kubernetes with the July acquisition of Rancher, for an undisclosed quantity. The Cupertino-based firm has constructed a preferred open supply Kubernetes container administration platform, with prospects like Sky, Sony Playstation and Deutsche Bahn.“Rancher and SUSE will help organizations control their cloud native futures,” stated Sheng Liang, Rancher CEO, as a part of a press release. “Our leading Kubernetes platform with SUSE’s broad open source software solutions creates a powerful combination, enabling IT and operations leaders worldwide to best meet the needs of their customers wherever they are on their digital transformation journey from the data center to cloud to edge.”   The deal is anticipated to shut earlier than the top of October 2020, topic to regulatory approval.6 July: Uber to accumulate rival Postmates for $2.65 billionRide hailing large Uber agreed to accumulate meals supply enterprise Postmates in July, in a $2.65 billion all-stock takeover. The deal will carry collectively two of the largest meals supply corporations within the US and can bolster Uber’s personal Eats model.”We’re thrilled to welcome Postmates to the Uber family as we innovate together to deliver better experiences for consumers, delivery people, and merchants across the country,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in an announcement.The deal is subject to regulatory approval and could yet face scrutiny over competition.30 June: Google acquires glasses maker NorthAfter its own failed effort at consumer smart glasses with Google Glass, the search giant announced the acquisition of North in June, for an undisclosed amount.The Canadian company makes the stylish Focals smart glasses and will join the Google office in its native Kitchener-Waterloo.”Google has at all times strived to be useful to folks of their day by day lives. We’re constructing in the direction of a future the place helpfulness is throughout you, the place all of your units simply work collectively and expertise fades into the background. We name this ambient computing,” Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President for units and providers at Google wrote in a weblog put up.26 June: Amazon to accumulate autonomous driving startup Zoox for £1.2 billionAmazon introduced that it’s buying the self-driving car firm Zoox for a reported $1.2 billion in June.Amazon has proven a eager curiosity within the self-driving automobile area for a while now, taking stakes within the electrical truckmaker Rivian and self-driving start-up Aurora.Founded in California 2014, Zoox was planning on launching a pilot programme for its ride-sharing service this yr, however has needed to put these plans on ice because of the coronavirus pandemic. It had raised practically $1 billion in funding so far, making it considered one of only a few autonomous driving ‘unicorns’.Zoox CEO, Aicha Evans and his cofounder Jesse Levinson will proceed to guide Zoox as “a standalone business” inside Amazon.”Zoox is working to think about, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing expertise,” said Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s CEO for worldwide consumer, in a blog post. “Like Amazon, Zoox is enthusiastic about innovation and about its prospects, and we’re excited to assist the proficient Zoox crew to carry their imaginative and prescient to actuality within the years forward.”23 June: Mastercard to acquire open banking firm FincityMastercard announced in June that it is acquiring Finicity for $825 million. The Utah-based fintech specialises in open banking – a new regulation-driven mode of banking which is further ahead in Europe than the US – where consumers are given greater control of their finances by leveraging secure APIs to connect their bank account to other fintech services and make quick payments, without using traditional middle men, like Mastercard.What Finicity provides is a platform which enables financial institutions to connect up these new data streams to a wide range of financial institutions and credit decisioning bodies, without having to do the ‘plumbing’ themselves. Notable clients include FICO and Experian.Analysts have noted a similarity in the deal to Visa’s recent purchase of Plaid for $5.3 billion (see below).”Mastercard invested early in open banking and launched a set of options in Europe final yr. Today, these main providers are dwell in a dozen international locations. With the addition of Finicity, Mastercard expects to not solely advance its open banking technique however improve the way it helps at this time’s digital economic system. This strategic strategy demonstrates how Mastercard is a wonderful match,” wrote Finicity cofounders Steve Smith and Nick Thomas in a weblog put up.22 June: Microsoft acquires CyberXMicrosoft introduced the acquisition of Israeli IoT safety specialists CyberX in June for an undisclosed quantity. Microsoft will incorporate CyberX expertise and expertise into its cloud Azure unit, the place it already presents the Azure IoT stack, Azure Security Center for IoT and Azure Sentinel. The CyberX crew will now report in to fellow Israeli Yuval Eldar, Microsoft GM of IoT Security.Founded in 2013, CyberX permits prospects to handle and enhance the safety of their IoT property, be {that a} set of autonomous robots on a manufacturing unit ground, to a fleet of consumer-facing sensible doorbells. Existing shoppers embrace main oil and has utilities and US authorities businesses, together with the US Department of Energy.28 May: Cisco acquires ThousandEyesCisco introduced its intention to accumulate community intelligence specialist ThousandEyes in May for an undisclosed quantity.San Francisco-based ThousandEyes sells cloud-based analytics instruments for the web, native and wide-area networks. The firm additionally tracks ISP, cloud and collaboration utility efficiency, knowledge which we use to trace international web outages over at Network World.“ThousandEyes’ technology warns us when a user’s experience is less than ideal and can pinpoint where those failures were caused. With thousands of agents deployed throughout the Internet, ThousandEyes’ platform has an unprecedented understanding of the Internet and grows more intelligent with every deployment,” Todd Nightingale, senior vice chairman and common supervisor at Cisco wrote in a weblog put up.Cisco plans to embed ThousandEyes expertise into its present merchandise, with AppDynamics utility efficiency, SD-WAN, WebEx and Meraki standout candidates for a lift. The crew will be a part of a newly shaped Networking Services unit at Cisco, reporting to Nightingale. ThousandEyes CEO Mohit Lad will turn out to be the GM of ThousandEyes.19 May: Microsoft acquires UK-based SoftomotiveMicrosoft introduced the acquisition of UK-based supplier of robotic course of automation software program Softomotive in May for an undisclosed quantity. Softomotive expertise and expertise – particularly its desktop automation device WinAutomation – can be folded into Microsoft’s Power Automate platform.Founded in 2005 by Greek entrepreneurs Argyris Kaninis and Marios Stavropoulos, Softomotive has 1000’s of shoppers throughout the healthcare, banking, insurance coverage, and telecom industries.”Together with Power Automate, WinAutomation will present prospects further choices for RPA desktop authoring so anybody can construct a bot and automate Windows-based duties. The mixed providing will even allow RPA connectivity to many new apps and providers together with SAP and conventional green-screen terminal functions,” Charles Lamanna, CVP for the Citizen Application Platform stated in a blog post.15 May: Facebook buys Giphy for $400 millionFacebook announced on 15 May that it was to buy Giphy, the popular searchable library for movable images, or gifs. The product and team will be rolled into the Instagram division of the social media giant. The price for the acquisition was pegged at $400 million by Axios, which broke the story.”Giphy makes on a regular basis conversations extra entertaining, and so we plan to additional combine their GIF library into Instagram and our different apps so that individuals can discover simply the precise option to specific themselves,” Vishal Shah, VP of product wrote in a blog post, in which he also referred to Giphy as a “chief in visible expression and creation”.Shah also revealed that 50% of Giphy traffic already comes via the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram itself.14 May: Microsoft to acquire Metaswitch NetworksMicrosoft announced the acquisition of the UK-based firm Metaswitch Networks in May for an undisclosed amount.This marks another move into the nascent 5G market by Microsoft, as Metaswitch specialises in virtualised, cloud-based communications software. The buy-out follows the acquisition of another 5G-focused company – Affirmed Networks – by Microsoft earlier this year.”Metaswitch’s complementary portfolio of ultra-high-performance, cloud-native communications software program will increase our vary of choices obtainable for the telecommunications business,” Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president for Azure Networking wrote in a blog post.”Microsoft intends to leverage the expertise and expertise of those two organisations, extending the Azure platform to each deploy and develop these capabilities at scale in a method that’s safe, environment friendly and creates a sustainable ecosystem.”13 May: VMware pronounces intent to accumulate OctarineThe virtualisation specialist VMware introduced its intention to accumulate Octarine for an undisclosed quantity in May.The California-based startup specialises in securing functions operating on the favored open supply Kubernetes container orchestration platform. VMware will instantly fold the Ocatrine crew and expertise into its cybersecurity unit Carbon Black, which it acquired final yr for $2.1 billion.“Acquiring Octarine enables us to advance intrinsic security for containers (and Kubernetes environments), by embedding the Octarine technology into the VMware  Carbon Black Cloud, and via deep hooks and integrations with the VMware Tanzu platform,” Patrick Morley, common supervisor and senior vice chairman at VMware’s Security Business Unit wrote in a weblog put up.12 May: Atlassian acquires assist desk agency HalpAtlassian introduced it’s buying helpdesk software-maker Halp in May.Halp permits expertise groups to assign, prioritise and reply requests straight from Slack. It already integrates with Atlassian’s Jira Service Desk and Confluence, permitting organisations to maintain information of tickets by way of their assist device of selection. Atlassian says it would preserve Halp as a standalone model and crew post-acquisition.7 May: Zoom acquires end-to-end encryption specialist KeybaseZoom introduced the acquisition of safe messaging specialist Keybase in May for an undisclosed quantity.The fashionable videoconferencing utility has come underneath intense scrutiny throughout the international lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, together with numerous slights in opposition to its safety credentials. CEO Eric Yuan shortly introduced a 90-day plan to handle these buyer issues, and this acquisition is being positioned as a part of that response.