Channel News
The 10 Biggest Tech M&A Deals Of 2022
Rick Whiting
Despite the economic uncertainties of 2022, the pace of blockbuster mergers and acquisitions in the IT industry doesn’t seem to have slowed. Here’s a look at the biggest tech mergers and acquisitions that were announced, completed or still in the works as of the end of the year.

Let’s Make A Deal
The economic uncertainty of 2022 doesn’t appear to have slowed merger and acquisition activity within the IT industry. Through the year IT vendors, solution providers and private equity firms continued to negotiate acquisition and merger deals with price tags in the hundreds of millions, billions and even tens of billions of dollars.
Acquisition activity may have even ticked up in the first half of 2022 with the stock market’s overall decline and plunging stock prices—and reduced company valuations—generating some bargains.
Blockbuster acquisitions have the potential to remake segments of the IT industry. The combination of two or more companies can create a newly dominant powerhouse in, say, semiconductors, IT management tools for MSPs, or products for hybrid work situations.
Acquiring companies can gain an infusion of technology that creates a competitive edge or provides an entry into a new vertical market. An acquisition can also give an IT vendor additional manufacturing capacity or help a solution provider establish a foothold in new geographies.
Even mergers and acquisitions that don’t happen can be big news in the IT industry. Cisco Systems, for example, reportedly made a $20 billion bid in early 2022 to buy machine data platform provider Splunk. In October systems integrator DXC Technology confirmed that it was in talks with a potential buyer —discussions that continued into late in the year without a deal. One of this year’s biggest news stories in the semiconductor industry was Nvidia’s decision to drop its $40-billion deal to acquire Arm in the face of regulatory opposition.
Here’s a look at the IT industry’s biggest acquisition, merger and spinoff deals in 2022. Some deals were announced last year (or, in one case, even earlier) and completed this year. Others have been announced but are still working their way through regulatory and/or shareholder approvals before they can be wrapped up—some possibly not until 2023.
Dollar value is certainly a factor in this ranking. Oracle’s $28.3 billion acquisition of health-care system developer Cerner made our midyear merger and acquisitions list, for example. Adobe’s deal to acquire Figma, a provider of collaborative design software, has an estimated value of $20 billion. And Microsoft’s deal to buy video game publisher Activision carries a whopping $75 billion price tag.
But some mergers and acquisitions have a greater impact on the IT industry in general, and the channel in particular, and that also figures into this year’s list.