Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) will set a new record in 2021, thanks in no small part to Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon.
According to The Street, the previous record for M&A was set in 2018, coming in at $1.55 trillion. Thanks to massive acquisitions this year, 2021 is set to blow past that, reaching $2.4 trillion.
Cloud companies helped contribute a large portion of that total.
Amazon agreed to purchase MGM Studios for $8.45 billion in May. The deal is seen as a way for Amazon to beef up its Prime Video platform even more, enabling it to better compete with Netflix, Hulu, and others.
Microsoft announced in April that it was purchasing Nuance, its second-largest acquisition. Nuance specializes in conversational AI for the healthcare market, an increasingly important industry for cloud providers.
The latest major cloud acquisition was Oracle’s announced plans to acquire medical records giant Cerner for a whopping $28 billion, the largest acquisition in its history.
Regulators have become increasingly wary of consolidation in the tech industry, especially with Big Tech buying up rivals. Despite the additional scrutiny, it doesn’t seem to have hurt the M&A market in 2021.