建立、支持与购买人工智能（AI）2026

Building, Backing, andBuying AI Institutional Research Group Kaidi GaoSenior Research Analyst,Venture Capital How Big Tech and enterprise software companies arediverging and what it means for the M&A landscape Caleb WilkinsData Analyst PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, most pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com Published on June 4, 2026 Contents Key takeaways Key takeawaysIntroduction •Big Tech has redirected AI capital toward infrastructure and strategic partnershipsrather than acquisitions. The Big Five’s global VC-backed acquisition countdeclined from a peak of 33 in 2017 and 2018 to seven in 2024. Combined capital Big Tech: Building and backing, not buying4NVIDIA: Acquiring to extend theAI infrastructure stack10 •NVIDIA is acquiring to extend and entrench the AI infrastructure platform on whichthe rest of the market depends. Since 2022, NVIDIA has made 21 acquisitions(15 of them AI-related) spanning workload orchestration, model optimization, •AI-driven disruption to per-seat SaaS economics is reshaping who acquires andwhy in the enterprise software market. AI agents can now execute workflowsthat previously required dedicated software subscriptions, compressing the •Among enterprise software incumbents, M&A has emerged as a key response toAI disruption for companies with the financial capacity and platform logic to act.Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, ServiceNow, and Workday have all increased theAI share of their recent deal activity, while companies facing structural or financial •Frontier AI labs and large AI-native companies have become meaningfulacquirers, targeting companies with proprietary data, deep workflow integration,or infrastructure capability that cannot be quickly replicated by a model update. •Regulatory scrutiny of talent acquisition structures and geopolitical interventionin cross-border deals represent two newly emerged risk categories for AI M&A.The Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into Microsoft’s deal with InflectionAI and the DOJ’s probe into Google’s talent acquisition of Character.AI’s team Data scope •Elevated private market valuations have placed the top-tier AI companies beyondconventional M&A reach, shifting the rational response for large buyers fromacquisition to investment. Recent private rounds have implied multiples that moststrategic acquirers will not meet without a highly specific capability fit or concrete This note draws on both VC-backed M&A data and broaderM&A data that is not limited toVC-backed targets. Both datasetsare used to provide an accurateand comprehensive picture ofacquisition activity and strategyacross Big Tech, NVIDIA, andenterprise software incumbents.While the majority of AI startupacquisitions involve VC-backed Introduction AI is redefining competitive advantage in the US tech industry, and that shift isreshaping the investment and M&A landscape in terms of who is backing andacquiring, what they are backing and acquiring, and why. Companies that controlthe frontier models, data, and infrastructure that enterprises rely on are positioned Big Tech companies (excluding Apple) are directing capital toward building andbacking frontier AI models and the compute infrastructure those models require,which is further discussed in the“Big Tech: Building and backing, not buying”section.Established enterprise software companies are acquiring to close AI capability gaps,though the pace and motivation vary considerably across the group. NVIDIA occupies Where data refers specificallyto VC-backed M&A activity, itis labeled as such. All other the identity of the acquirer signals strategic intent, and where a company’s exit andpartnership prospects depend as much on its core product as on the buyer population This note examines how those diverging strategies are playing out across thecorporate landscape, the structural and regulatory forces shaping them, and whatthey mean for AI companies evaluating exit options. It builds on theUS VC-BackedM&A Outlook, which documented a sustained pullback in large corporate acquisitions Big Tech: Building and backing, not buying AI has fundamentally altered how Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—collectively known as the Big Five—think about growth and competitive positioning,further compounding a pullback in acquisition activity that was already underway.Google and Meta are developing their own frontier large language models (LLMs)while also deploying capital externally. Google has invested in Anthropic alongsideits Gemini development. Meta led a $14.3 billion Series G in Scale AI in June 2025 The Big Five’s global VC-backed acquisition count peaked at 33 in 2017 and 2018 anddeclined to seven in 2024 before recovering to 14 in 2025 and 12 in 2026 YTD. Whileannualized pace suggests a YoY increase, the recovery is uneven: Meta, Amazon, andGoogle account for the bulk of 2026 YTD activity, while Microsoft and Apple remain Apple’s M&A activity peaked