Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) will likely upturn this year in the technology industry since private equity firms seek outlets for accumulated capital while waiting for uncertainties across the several national elections held in 2024 to resolve. This is what analyst Wolters Kluwer’s CT corporation perceives. Other factors that support the increment in M&A deals of the year include lower interest rates in the US and Europe, with a desirable regulatory environment. Let’s delve into the deals changing games in 2025.
AI and Analytics Driving Strategic Acquisition
The AI era continues to reshape M&A in 2025. Companies with experience in generative AI, large language models, and sophisticated analytics are emerging as acquisition targets.
The acceptance of Gen AI and large language models has speed up the requirement for specialised AI expertise, Predictive Analytics, Decision Intelligence platforms, and automation. The data integration, sophisticated analytics, and governance remain key priorities since firms strive to exploit detailed insights from their data assets.
The experts are monitoring the increasing acquisition interest in firms delivering AI-powered tools across key verticals. The organisations specialising in AI-powered diagnostics have become mainly lucrative in the healthcare sector. The need for the acquisitions are further influenced by the increasing demand for cloud, AI ad cybersecurity solutions.
What Does the Report Say?
Some people still have eyes even after the Trump administration’s bonfire of the regulators. HPE’s $14 billion bid for Juniper Networks, the big deal from 2024, was discontinued by the US Department of Justice for a few days after the authorization of Trump.
Although the deal caused worries regarding concentration in the industry, that is not usually a concern in technology mergers, as reported by Bain & Company’s Global M&A report 2025. Bain reported that around two-thirds of billion-dollar-plus mergers across the tech industry focused on increasing scope, not scale. However, half of the deals in the industry were about increasing scale. The deals that focused on scope, extending the product range. The synergies gained are more on the revenue part since the sales team can cross-sell both the products of the companies using AI to improve efficiency further.
As opined by CT corporation, AI is not always favourable in merger deals. Stringent regulations related to AI, mainly in Europe, impose a heavy compliance burden on businesses. In turn, the dealmakers need to remember that if the acquirer and the target are in different regions.
The booming strategic importance of AI to national security is also anticipated to increase government scrutiny of cross-border trade.
Top M&A Deals of the Year
IBM closes a deal with HashiCorp, ten months after a $6.4 billion deal. HashiCorp has now been acquired by IBM. It is well known for its Terraform infrastructure automation tool that can contribute to the vision of IBM about hybrid cloud and AI. The acquisition will also contribute to the IBM offerings, like Red Hat, Watsonx, IT automation, data security, and its consulting businesses. IBM already makes use of Hashicorp technology in its cloud offerings.
Another notable M&A deal of the year for IBM is its intent to purchase DataStax to improve its generative AI capabilities. DataStax provides AstraDP, a database-as-a-service built on Apache Cassandra, and Langflow, a web-based no-code platform for prototyping LangChain flows in AI application development.
Another notable M&A deal of the year happened between MongoDB and VoyageAI. NoSQL database vendor MongoDB has acquired model maker Voyage AI to support businesses developing AI applications hassle-free. It is leveraging on expertise of Voyaage AI with retrieval-augmented generation to get the right answers out of the data store.
SolarWinds, the IT service management and security information and event management software vendor, is well known as the target of one of the biggest software supply chain attacks. A new private equity owner has decided to acquire it for $4.4 billion. The two largest shareholders of the company, private equity firms Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, purchased the organisation in a deal that cost around $4.5 billion.
Sophos acquired Secureworks, marking one of the greatest M&A deals of the year. The acquisition was agreed upon for $859 million. The company will be able to capitalise on its XDR products and become one of the largest providers of MDR services in the world.
Databricks has acquired BladeBridge to support organizations in competing with competitor data warehouses. The data platform modernisation software provider has been acquired by Databricks, but at an undisclosed price. The deal could benefit customers of Teradata, Snowflake, Microsoft SQL Server, or Amazon Redshift.
Another noteworthy M&A deal of the year could be the US Justice Department’s block of HPE’s plan to purchase Juniper Networks. The US Department of Justice has tried to prevent HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks for a year. This suggests a threat to the competition in the wireless networking market. HPE initially bid for the network equipment vendor in 2024, hoping to take over Juniper’s Mist family of AI network management tools.
Finally, this year, Lenovo purchased Infinidat to increase its storage portfolio. The enterprise storage firm Infinidat will soon be associated with Lenovo. Lenovo will use its products, including InfiniBox for integrating data protocols and InfiniGuard for data protection. However, the M&A cost has not yet been revealed, but some sources say $1.6 billion.
Looking Ahead for M&A Deals of the Year
Looking ahead to 2025, M&A in the technology industry is anticipated to maintain its momentum regardless of the wider market uncertainties. The experts projected a sustainable interest from strategic bidders and private equity firms. These are influenced by the immediate need for digital transformation capabilities and budding technology expertise.
Corporate consumers are actively looking for acquisitions to deal with the technology gaps, scale operations, and improve the vertical and regional capabilities. The cross-border trade is also projected to surge in 2025, since global businesses look to expand their foothold in the niche markets and diversify their revenue paths.
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