So far, this has been a pretty good year for startup acquisitions.
Acquirers made just over $100 billion worth of disclosed-price startup purchases 1 in the first half of 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s a whopping 155% increase from the same period last year, showing buyers are increasingly willing to write big checks for sought-after companies.
Notably, roughly a third of this year’s total comes from a single deal: Google’s planned purchase of cybersecurity unicorn Wiz for a record-setting $32 billion. But there were other startups selling in multibillion-dollar acquisitions as well, including device designer Io and automation software provider Moveworks.
Dealmaking gets more frenetic
Deal count, meanwhile, has held steadier, with the number of announced acquisitions hovering in the mid-400s for the past three quarters. The number of M&A deals tends to be less influenced by market conditions, since buyers are inclined to go bargain hunting during down cycles and compete aggressively for hot companies during bullish ones.
Lately, the ambience leans more frenetic, particularly as pertains to AI. This was evidenced this past week, with the drama around AI coding provider Windsurf. The startup was about to sell to OpenAI for $3 billion until Google made a deal to hire its CEO and co-founder, Varun Mohan, and pay $2.4 billion for compensation and licensing.Then on Monday, AI startup Cognition announced it would acquire Windsurf.
AI was also the draw for the largest Q2 deal, OpenAI’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Io, a design startup co-founded by Jony Ive and focused on AI-powered devices.
Even with all the excitement around AI, however, the majority of M&A spending this year hasn’t gone to the space. Per Crunchbase data, only around $15 million of disclosed-price acquisitions were for AI startups in the first half of this year. (However, that excludes Wiz, which isn’t classified as an artificial intelligence company but does list AI security as one of its focus areas.)
Biggest H1 M&A deals
So where is M&A spending concentrating?
To get a sense, we used Crunchbase data to aggregate a list of 13 of the largest acquisitions in the first half of this year.
As shown above, besides AI, enterprise software fared well. Top deals in the space include Moveworks’ $2.85 billion acquisition by ServiceNow, as well as accounts payable platform Melio’s $2.5 billion sale to Xero.
In the healthcare space, electronic health record software provider Modernizing Medicine delivered one of the biggest outcomes, selling a majority stake to private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group at a reported $5.3 billion valuation.
Smaller and stealthier deals add up
The vast majority of startup acquisitions don’t have a disclosed price. But they can add up.
Oftentimes, these deals involve large-cap acquirers and well-funded startups. Examples from 2025 include Stripe’s acquisition of crypto wallet startup Privy, Snap’s purchase of school scheduling app Saturn Technologies, and Zscaler’s acquisition of cloud security startup Red Canary,
It helps acquirers that, four years after the venture funding peak in 2021, there’s still a large pipeline of funded companies taking a serious look at exit options. If current trends continue, we should see a growing number of them accomplishing that goal through M&A.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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