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Cisco Systems Inc. is king of the "oughts," at least when it comes to acquisitions of venture-backed companies.
According to statistics compiled by venture industry tracker VentureSource, the networking company acquired 48 venture-backed companies from 2000 to 2009, by far the most of any company, despite a notable drop in activity the past two years. International Business Machines Corp. also gave venture capitalists plenty to cheer about in the decade, placing second with 35 deals, while Microsoft Corp. finished third with 30.
Cisco topped the annual venture-backed acquirer list three times - 2000, 2004 and 2007 - but made only two deals each in 2008 and 2009, tying for fourth both of those years. However, like many cash-rich technology companies that have largely minded their wallets during the recession, perhaps believing that acquisition targets were overvalued, Cisco expects to aggressively pursue acquisitions in 2010. That's what executives said last fall after Cisco agreed to buy two publicly traded companies - Starent Networks Corp. and Tandberg ASA - for a combined nearly $6 billion.
On the health care side, Medtronic Inc. acquired the most venture-backed companies in the decade with 11. Johnson & Johnson was second with nine.
In 2009, Oracle proved that it wasn't entirely distracted by its massive planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc., topping the list of venture-backed acquirers with five deals while finishing fifth in the decade with 23. EMC Corp. was second in 2009 with four deals, and Google Inc. and Thomson Reuters Corp. each made three.
Oracle's 2009 venture-backed acquisitions included Conformia Software Inc., a maker of process management software; GoldenGate Software Inc., whose products help businesses tie together data stored in different systems; HyperRoll Inc., a provider of data aggregation software; mValent Inc., provider of configuration management software; and Virtual Iron Software Inc., a seller of server virtualization and management software. None of the terms of those deals were disclosed.
So which company will take home the most VC-backed companies in 2010? The easy money is on the tech giants like Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Oracle, but don't forget Apple, which appears to be stepping up its game with last month's acquisition of online music start-up Lala Media Inc. and today's announced purchase of Quattro Wireless Inc. Then there's Facebook Inc., a much smaller player relative to the others, but it has loads of extra cash and valuable stock that it could use to roll up young Web start-ups like it did with FriendFeed Inc. last summer.
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