Dealogic data: the global M&A activity in the tech sector in 2024 jumped 20%+ YoY to $534B, accounting for the largest share of the total $3.45T in M&A activity
Context & Ripple Effects
Technology had already shown periodic M&A strength, including a sharp first-half 2021 increase in Southeast Asian tech deals. The 2024 total places the sector at the center of the broader deal market rather than as a regional or cyclical outlier.
The pattern continued into 2025: tech deals represented a large share of announced global M&A in the first five months, with AI software comprising most tech transactions.
First-order effects
- Technology becomes the largest single contributor to global M&A value in 2024, giving tech buyers, targets, and advisers a larger share of the active deal pipeline.
- The $534B total establishes a higher benchmark for technology dealmaking after the prior year, making the sector a central driver of the overall M&A market.
Second-order effects
- Capital and advisory attention is likely to remain concentrated on technology transactions as the sector supplies the largest portion of global deal value.
- The subsequent 2025 mix, in which AI software made up 75% of tech M&A, indicates that the recovery in tech dealmaking was increasingly concentrated in a particular software category rather than spread evenly across technology.
Third-order effects
- If this concentration persists, technology M&A may become a more important mechanism for allocating capital and consolidating strategic capabilities, with AI software increasingly shaping the composition of that activity.
- A larger technology share of global M&A also raises the stakes for competition scrutiny around acquisitions of strategically important software, though this dataset alone does not establish how regulators will respond.
The trend: Technology is becoming the leading arena for global dealmaking, with AI software increasingly concentrating the strategic rationale for acquisitions.