Major Tech Acquisitions

Tech M&A is one of the most-searched topics in business history. Wikipedia has per-company pages and the financial press has per-deal coverage, but a cross-company "biggest tech deals ever" reference is harder to find. This page is that reference: every closed, pending, or failed acquisition by a US-based technology company at or above roughly $500 million, with select smaller deals included where they reshaped the industry (Google’s 2005 acquisition of Android for around $50 million, Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion).

Notable failed deals

Failed and abandoned deals are some of the most-searched M&A queries on the open web. The page includes them, marked with a rose Failed badge:

• Nvidia — ARM — $40 billion, announced September 2020, abandoned February 2022 after FTC, EC, and CMA opposition.
• Microsoft — Yahoo — $44.6 billion hostile bid, announced February 2008, withdrawn May 2008 after Yahoo’s board rejected the offer.
• Adobe — Figma — $20 billion, announced September 2022, abandoned December 2023 in the face of UK CMA and EC objections.
• Zoom — Five9 — $14.7 billion, announced July 2021, abandoned September 2021 after Five9 shareholders signaled rejection.
• Intel — Tower Semiconductor — $5.4 billion, announced February 2022, abandoned August 2023 after China’s SAMR did not approve in time.
• Visa — Plaid — $5.3 billion, announced January 2020, abandoned January 2021 after the DOJ filed an antitrust suit.
• Amazon — iRobot — $1.7 billion, announced August 2022, abandoned January 2024 after EC opposition.

What "consideration" and "status" mean

• Cash means the acquirer paid in dollars only. Stock means target shareholders received acquirer shares. Cash & stock means a mixed package. Some all-stock deals (Avago/Broadcom-Symantec-style) name themselves "mergers" rather than "acquisitions"; functionally they sit in the same bucket and are listed here.
• Closed = the deal completed and the target became part of the acquirer (or, in the case of all-stock mergers, the combined entity took form). Pending = announced and signed but not yet closed; usually means regulatory review is still ongoing. Failed = the deal was announced but never closed — either the parties walked away by agreement, regulators blocked it, the target's board rejected a hostile bid, or the buyer couldn’t finance the deal.

Data sources

• SEC EDGAR — 8-K announcements at deal signing, S-4 / merger-proxy filings for stock-and-mixed deals, and 10-K subsequent-events sections. Public domain. The Tech Filings page on this site is the cross-company SEC feed; this page is the cross-company M&A feed.
• Company press releases — primary source for deal value, announced date, and consideration type, especially for non-listed targets.
• DOJ / FTC / EC / CMA / SAMR filings and rulings — merger-review actions, consent decrees, and termination announcements. Cited per row when the deal drew formal review.
• Contemporaneous reporting — NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg, and Reuters for color and for confirmation of dates when the parties only filed a press release without an 8-K.

What is intentionally excluded

• Sub-$500 million deals, except the few that reshaped the industry (Google-Android, Microsoft-Hotmail, Facebook-Instagram, Apple-NeXT).
• Strategic minority investments and joint-venture structures (Microsoft’s ~$13 billion in OpenAI, Amazon’s ~$8 billion in Anthropic, Google’s investment in Anthropic). These are not acquisitions in the corporate-control sense and belong on a separate "tech strategic investments" reference.
• Editorial framing — "this was a great deal" / "this was overpriced." The page reports value, dates, and outcome and lets the visitor judge.
• Speculation about possible future deals.
• Sub-acquisitions where the deal was reported but the parties never confirmed a value (some Apple talent-acqui-hires fall here).

Related pages on this site

• Tech Filings — the most recent 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, and other SEC filings from major US-listed tech companies. Every closed deal on this page generated 8-Ks at signing and at closing; many of those filings are visible there as well.
• Major Tech Organizations — per-company profiles for the acquirers on this page (founders, current CEO, headcount, revenue).
• Windows Versions and iOS Versions — per-platform timelines whose history sections cover the surrounding M&A activity (Microsoft-Activision, Apple-NeXT) at the platform-narrative level.