Top Technology Merger and Acquisition in 2018

Last year was hardly a blockbuster for Technology mergers and acquisitions, with Cisco's purchase of AppDynamics for $3.7 billion, Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo and Apple purchasing UK success story Shazam some of the few deals worthy of moving the needle.

So what's happening in 2018? Deloitte says that technology acquisition is now the number one driver for M&A activity in its M&A Trends report for the year. Then there is the fact that Apple, the most valuable company on the planet, is looking to spend some of its massive $250 billion cash pile this year. Keep an eye on our enterprise tech startups to watch for some potential IPO candidates that could get snapped up.

Here are the most notable tech acquisitions of 2018 so far.

In October, 2018, cloud communications platform Twilio announced it would be acquiring SendGrid, a leading email API platform, in a $2 billion deal. Both companies are targeted towards developers, offering APIs to help seamlessly incorporate communications channels into their apps.

Together, the platforms serve millions of developers and count over 100,000 customers. This will mark a marriage of the leading cloud communications platform with the leading email API platform - adding email to the communications channels Twilio currently caters for, namely: voice, messaging and video.

"Increasingly, our customers are asking us to solve all of their strategic communications challenges - regardless of channel. Email is a vital communications channel for companies around the world, and so it was important to us to include this capability in our platform," said Jeff Lawson, Twilio's co-founder and CEO.

"The two companies share the same vision, the same model, and the same values. We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together the two leading developer-focused communications platforms to create the unquestioned platform of choice for all companies looking to transform their customer engagement."

Mergers and acquisitions in 2017 hardly got any hit with only a few to mention, such as Verizon acquired Yahoo, Apple purchased Shazam and some other deals clutching the main headlines. Deloitte has forecasted that Mergers and Acquisitions would speed up in 2018 mostly driven by technology acquisitions.

It has already been half of 2018 and some of the big announcements have already caught the attention and surprised the market. The acquisitions and mergers are not only signing a piece of paper. It allows influencers and industry leaders to watch and forecast where these companies will be heading to and how it will affect consumers in the years to come.

M&A activity remained healthy in 2017, despite being a bit of a mixed bag. Technology mergers and acquisitions value was in line with 2016, but fell 27% from 2015’s record level. Part of the reason was the decline in the number of megadeals (those valued at $10 billion or higher), which dropped more than 50% from 2015. Although the number of very large deals declined, the total number of deals held steady. About 36,000 deals were announced in 2017, in line with 2016 and still above the long-term average.