What's the biggest tech acquisition in history?

Dell's buyout of EMC successful 2015

IBM buyout of Red Hat successful 2018

Elon Musk's Twitter takeover successful 2022

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard successful 2023

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has officially been completed, making it nan largest tech manufacture buyout successful history astatine $68.7 billion. The deal, which overcame important antitrust hurdles successful some nan U.S. and abroad, not only represents Microsoft's largest acquisition to day but besides importantly reshapes nan video crippled scenery by bringing celebrated franchises for illustration Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush nether Microsoft's umbrella.

This monumental woody surpasses nan erstwhile grounds held by Dell's acquisition of endeavor retention institution EMC for $67 billion successful rate and stock, which was announced successful 2015 and completed successful 2016.

In 3rd spot is Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter (now rebranded arsenic X), which he yet purchased successful October 2022 for nan primitively agreed-upon magnitude of $44 cardinal aft immoderate nationalist backmost and forth, taking nan institution private.

Nvidia's grounded effort to get Arm would person taken a spot successful this list. The $40 cardinal transaction would person marked 1 of nan biggest semiconductor purchases successful nan multi-decade history of nan spot business. The astonishing irony was that nan woody didn't impact immoderate chips astatine all. Years prior, Softbank had purchased Arm for astir $32 billion. After nan grounded saga of Nvidia trying to bargain Arm, nan position of some companies stay stronger than ever – especially Nvidia's.

Fourth spot goes to nan merger of renowned chipmaker Broadcom pinch rival Avago Technologies successful a rate and banal deal weighted astatine $37 billion. In 2020, AMD reached an statement to acquisition FPGA master Xilinx successful an all-stock woody weighted astatine $35 billion.

To information retired nan apical acquisitions successful tech history, IBM acquired open-source package developer Red Hat for $34 billion. The woody took spot successful 2018, aft IBM and Red Hat had been partners connected enterprise-grade Linux for complete 20 years.

Other high-profile acquisitions that person fallen disconnected nan apical rankings see Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion successful 2016. Also, HP's takeover of Compaq successful 2002 which was virtually tied pinch Facebook's buyout of WhatsApp (now Meta Platforms), some being astir $19 cardinal exchanges. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola and sold it to Lenovo 2 years later for $2.9 billion – minus each those mobile patents they really wanted for its Android ambitions.

You whitethorn beryllium wondering why AOL's buyout of Time Warner isn't among nan answers, considering it was a larger woody than immoderate of nan above. AOL paid $106 cardinal for Time Warner successful 2000 – it was primitively weighted astatine $165 cardinal but later reduced. However, that acquisition is typically excluded from tech lists because AOL and Time Warner are considered media companies.