2024 has been a year of monumental tech acquisitions, with companies making bold moves to secure their stake in the AI-driven future. From Cisco’s $28 billion deal for Splunk to Nvidia’s latest $250 million purchase of OctoAI, the biggest names in tech are reshaping industries through strategic acquisitions. And it’s not just about the deals themselves—reverse acquihires are taking center stage as giants like Google and Amazon absorb top talent and cutting-edge technology from smaller startups. These moves signal a new era of innovation, where acquiring talent and tech is just as crucial as expanding market reach.
In a landmark deal, Cisco completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk on March 18, 2024. The all-cash transaction valued Splunk at $157 per share and brought together Cisco’s networking expertise with Splunk’s data analytics and cybersecurity capabilities. With Gary Steele, Splunk’s former CEO, joining Cisco as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Splunk, the combined entity aims to redefine data utilization for security and operations, creating a robust AI-powered platform to enhance visibility and insights across digital footprints.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced its intent to acquire Juniper Networks for approximately $14 billion, a deal expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025. Valued at $40 per share, the acquisition will significantly expand HPE’s networking portfolio, particularly with Juniper’s Mist AI capabilities. The move positions HPE as a leader in secure, AI-native architecture from edge to cloud, doubling its networking business and enhancing its ability to capitalize on the growing demand for AI-driven networking solutions.
IBM’s $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp, set to close by the end of 2024, underscores its commitment to hybrid cloud and AI automation. By integrating HashiCorp’s Terraform platform with IBM’s Red Hat portfolio, the deal is poised to strengthen IBM’s multicloud offerings and expand its infrastructure management capabilities. The acquisition is expected to drive significant growth, positioning IBM more competitively in the trillion-dollar cloud market with a robust end-to-end hybrid cloud solution.
Private equity giant Thoma Bravo completed its $5.3 billion acquisition of cybersecurity AI company Darktrace on October 1, 2024. With overwhelming shareholder approval, Darktrace will continue under its existing management team. The acquisition provides Darktrace with the resources to enhance its AI-driven cybersecurity solutions and expand its market reach, solidifying Thoma Bravo’s standing in the cybersecurity sector amid growing demand for AI-powered security tools.
Synopsys announced its $35 billion acquisition of Ansys on January 16, 2024, with the transaction expected to close in the first half of 2025. Combining Synopsys’ chip design tools with Ansys’ expertise in larger electronic systems evaluation, the merger aims to address challenges in AI, silicon proliferation, and software-defined systems. Ansys shareholders will receive a mix of cash and stock, and Synopsys will own approximately 84% of the combined company, creating a leader in silicon-to-systems design solutions.
In a significant move in the financial services sector, Capital One announced its $35.3 billion acquisition of Discover Financial Services in February 2024. The all-stock transaction, expected to close in early 2025, merges two of America’s largest credit card companies. Discover shareholders will receive 1.0192 Capital One shares per Discover share, resulting in Capital One shareholders owning 60% of the combined entity. The merger will create the largest credit card issuer in the U.S. by loans, offering cost synergies and enhanced capabilities in the payments market.
AMD bolstered its AI capabilities with the $665 million acquisition of Silo AI, Europe’s largest private AI lab. Expected to close in the second half of 2024, the deal brings expertise in scalable, multilingual large language models (LLMs) to AMD’s Artificial Intelligence Group. Led by Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin, the team will enhance AMD’s presence in the European AI market and accelerate its strategy for AI innovation, particularly in language processing and open-source tools.
Nvidia continued its acquisition spree with the $250 million purchase of OctoAI on September 30, 2024. Specializing in generative AI tools and cloud platforms, OctoAI enhances Nvidia’s ability to offer enterprise solutions for AI model optimization and deployment. As Nvidia’s fifth acquisition of the year, this deal supports the company’s strategy to build a comprehensive generative AI stack while ensuring flexibility and scalability across diverse hardware platforms.
Google orchestrated a $2.7 billion reverse acquihire with Character.AI in August 2024, hiring key talent, including founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, while securing a non-exclusive license for the company’s technology. Character.AI remains independent under interim CEO Dominic Perella. This strategic move bolsters Google’s Gemini initiative and its broader AI projects, providing access to advanced large language model (LLM) technology.
Amazon executed a reverse acquihire with robotics AI startup Covariant in August 2024, bringing founders Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan, along with 25% of Covariant’s workforce, into its fold. The deal also secured a non-exclusive license for Covariant’s AI models for robotics. This strategic move enhances Amazon’s capabilities in warehouse automation and AI-driven robotics, reinforcing its competitive position in the AI talent market.
In June 2024, OpenAI acquired Multi, a startup formerly known as Remotion, in an acqui-hire deal. Multi, founded in 2019 by Alexander Embiricos (ex-Dropbox product manager) and Charley Ho (ex-Google software engineer), focused on enterprise-oriented, video-first collaboration tools. The team of five developed features like simultaneous screen sharing for up to 10 users, automatic deep links for work documents, and lightweight video conferencing alternatives to Zoom. With $13 million in funding from Greylock and First Round Capital, Multi gained traction for its innovative solutions. As part of the deal, the team will join OpenAI’s ChatGPT desktop team, responsible for enhancing the ChatGPT for Mac desktop app. Multi’s software will sunset by July 24, 2024, with user data deleted thereafter, setting the stage for OpenAI to integrate AI-powered collaboration into its product lineup.
Rockset, a real-time analytics platform designed to simplify complex data analysis workflows, continues to make strides in empowering enterprises with faster insights. With its robust database and serverless architecture, Rockset helps companies scale their analytics efficiently without significant infrastructure investments. Leveraging cloud-native technologies, Rockset enables rapid deployment and high-speed analytics, catering to growing demand in industries reliant on real-time data processing.
Nvidia’s $100 million acquisition of Shoreline.io in June 2024 marks a significant move to enhance its DGX Cloud business. Founded by former AWS executive Anurag Gupta, Shoreline.io specializes in automated data center issue resolution, leveraging real-time monitoring and machine learning to minimize human intervention. Its key features include anomaly detection, automated incident response, and integration with popular DevOps tools. Nvidia plans to integrate Shoreline’s technology into its AI Enterprise software suite, focusing on predictive maintenance for GPU clusters and bolstering reliability in AI-driven data centers.
In July 2024, Nvidia acquired Brev.dev for approximately $300 million, strengthening its appeal to AI researchers and developers. Brev.dev’s platform simplifies AI development workflows with one-click development environments, automated infrastructure scaling, and collaborative tools for machine learning teams. This acquisition accelerates the deployment of AI applications on Nvidia hardware while enhancing existing software like CUDA and cuDNN. Nvidia’s integration plans include optimized templates and workflows, expanding Brev.dev’s capabilities to support its specialized AI hardware.
Nvidia’s September 2024 acquisition of OctoAI (formerly OctoML) for $250 million demonstrates its focus on generative AI. OctoAI’s platform excels in model optimization, serverless inference APIs, and cost-efficient AI workload management, making generative AI more accessible to enterprises. Nvidia aims to incorporate OctoAI’s technology into its AI Enterprise software suite, develop GPU-optimized versions of generative AI models, and expand platform capabilities to support its full range of AI accelerators.
These top 10 tech M&A deals of 2024 in AI showcase the intense competition and rapid innovation in the sector. Major tech companies are investing heavily to secure market dominance and accelerate technological advancements, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. The trend of reverse acquihires is also gaining momentum, allowing giants like Google and Amazon to absorb top talent and cutting-edge technology from smaller startups without full acquisitions
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