Artificial Intelligence M&A Breakdown: Salesforce is on a Shopping Spree!

Saleforce is the most Active Acquirer in Artificial Intelligence since 2015

The Artificial space has been extremely active in terms of M&A activity, with the space seeing a total of 81 acquisitions. Out of this total, the last 16 months, till date, accounts for 38% with 31 acquisitions taking shape since 2015.

With the recent news of Salesforce acquiring deep learning startup, Metamind, the AI space has already witnessed 5 Acquisitions in 2016 alone.

With a total funding raise of $51M, Nexidia is the top Acquired Company

Multichannel Contact Center Interaction Analytics Software provider, Nexidia, stands out as being the top acquired startup, having raised a total of $51M from a host of investors such as Morgan Stanley, Paladin Capital Group, Cordova Ventures, H.I.G. Capital, Boston Millennia Partners, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Sandbox Industries, and HarbourVest Partners. Nexidia has been acquired by NICE in 2016 for $135M.

Here are the top 10 Acquisitions since 2015, based on the total funding received by the acquired entity.

Salesforce, Apple, and Twitter have made the most acquisitions since 2015

With its acquisition of Metamind, Salesforce has certainly shown its interest in the AI space, expanding its total number of acquisitions during the last 16 months(till date) to four. Besides Metamind, Salesforce has acquired PredictionIO, Tempo AI, and Minhash.

Apple follows with three acquisitions, namely, Emotient, VocalIQ, and Perceptio. Coming in the third spot is social networking giant, Twitter, who has acquired TellApart and Whetlab.

Interestingly, Salesforce has made an all-time total of five acquisitions in the space. Google which has the most number of acquisitions (11) does not feature in the acquirers list since 2015.

2015 – 16(YTD) Acquirers showed most interest towards Machine Intelligence Systems

Salesforce acquiring Metamind is yet another acquisition in the Machine Intelligence Systems, the segment which has witnessed the most number of acquisitions in the last 16 months (till date). The other acquired startups in this space are PredictionIO (which was, again, acquired by Salesforce), Saplo (acquired by Strossle), AlchemyAPI (acquired by IBM), Saffron Technology(acquired by Intel) and Perceptio (acquired by Apple)

SV Angel has the most exits since 2015

Early stage VC, SV Angel, has seen a total of three exits in the last 16 months (till date). These exits came in the form of Cruise Automation’s acquisition by General Motors, Twitter acquiring TellApart, and Facebook Acquiring Wit.ai.

Finally, here’s a quick look at the list of Acquisitions which have taken place since 2015