The state of AI acquisitions 2021-2023: Big Tech leading the charge

This report focuses on analysis of Artificial Intelligence (AI) acquisitions completed between January 2021 to December 2023. A total of 461 AI deals have been analysed during this period based on the deal count, deal value, sector, geographies of the buyer and target company, and the focus area of the acquisition. For example, there has been lot of buzz around Generative AI, since the launch of ChatGPT and Microsoft’s investment in Open AI in 2021. This has led to an increase in the acquisition of organisations that use or develop AI products using Natural Language Programming (NLP) and Machine Translation.

The analysis of these acquisitions provides an outlook on the state of the AI market over the past three years based on multiple attributes such as investment range, geographic focus, AI use-cases/ deployment focus area, target sectors, and deal value (where available).

All acquisitions have been categorised against the use cases to which they relate. Transforma Insights identifies 42 main categories of AI Use Cases as illustrated below.

These 42 Use Cases are categorised into five groups:

• Data Analysis: Business Process Forecasting, Compliance Analysis, Customer Behaviour Analysis, Customer Segmentation, Data Scrubbing, Demand Forecasting, Feedback Analysis, Geophysical Analysis, Knowledge Management and Horizon Scanning, Risk Analysis
• Process Optimisation: Churn Management, Dynamic Pricing, Inventory Management, Logistics Optimisation, Personalised Marketing, Recommendation Engines, System Optimisation, Transportation Optimisation, Workflow Optimisation
• Decision Support and Automation: Bioinformatics, Computer Assisted Diagnostics, Fraud Detection, Intelligent Recruitment & HR, Product Design and Development, Repetitive Process Automation, Smart Customer Support, Trading Strategies
• Data Stream Processing: Activity Recognition, Autonomous Systems, Image Processing & Analysis, Intrusion Detection, Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Predictive Maintenance, Sentiment Analysis, Threat Detection, Traffic Monitoring
• User Interaction: Chatbots & Digital Assistance, eGovernment, Next Generation Search, Quantified Self, Voice Authentication

With regard to vertical sector, the acquirer and the acquiree have been classified across 21 different industry verticals sectors comprising Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Mining & Quarrying, Manufacturing, Electricity, Gas, Steam & A/C, Water Supply & Waste Management, Construction, Retail & Wholesale, Transportation & Storage, Accommodation & Food Service, Information & Communication, Finance & Insurance, Real Estate, Professional, Scientific & Technical, Administrative, Government, Education, Health & Social Care, Arts & Entertainment, Other Services, Consumer and Cross-vertical.

Table of Contents

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2 CONTENTS

3 SCOPE

4 STATE OF AI ACQUISITIONS 7

4.1 AI acquisition count

4.2 Major deals based on their deal value

4.3 Buyer and Target sector focus

4.4 Deals by geography

4.5 Financing source

4.6 Use-case focus for AI acquisitions

4.7 Technology companies are the largest buyers

5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

6 DATA AND METHODOLOGY

6.1 Taxonomy of Buyer and Target sectors

6.2 Taxonomy of AI Use-Cases

7 FURTHER READING

8 ABOUT TRANSFORMA INSIGHTS