Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from the past month. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]).

Intel placed its bets on a $2 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI)-focused startup Habana Labs to bolster its position in the highly competitive data center processor space that the chip giant predicts will be worth more than $25 billion by 2024. Analysts noted the move could also highlight issues with its current Nervana platform.

The deal will see Intel fork over a significant multiple for Israel-based Habana Labs. Intel’s venture capital arm Intel Capital was one of four investors in Habana, including the chip company’s most recent $75 million Series B round in 2018. But a Crunchbase report also noted that Habana generated just $2 million in annual revenues.

Alan Priestley, VP and analyst at Gartner, explained in an email to SDxCentral that the move should expand Intel’s ability to compete in the broad AI space.

Cisco reached a deal to buy Exablaze, a low-latency networking device maker, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition adds Exablaze’s field programmable gate array (FPGA) based devices to Cisco’s portfolio, which the networking giant says will boost its intent-based networking (IBN) strategy.

Cisco expects the acquisition to close by the third quarter of its fiscal 2020.

Next-generation firewall and SD-WAN vendor Fortinet announced the acquisition of CyberSponse, a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platform provider. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

Fortinet has had a close relationship with the Arlington, Virginia-based SOAR provider for some time. CyberSponse, which was founded in 2011 and has received approximately $7.6 million in funding to date, was a Fortinet Security Fabric Partner prior to the acquisition.

According to Fortinet, CyberSponse’s feature set will further extend the automation and incident response capabilities of its FortiAnalyzer, FortiSIEM, and FortiGate products.

VMware closed on its $2.7 billion purchase of Pivotal, folding those operations into a new business unit.

Nvidia cleared another hurdle in its $6.9 billion quest to acquire chipmaker Mellanox after the European Commission gave its stamp of approval.

F5 Networks is set to acquire fraud prevention company Shape Security for $1 billion in a deal that CEO and President François Locoh-Donou said “changes the game in application security.” This is F5’s largest acquisition to date and its second this year. Earlier this year it paid $670 million for DevOps company Nginx.

Application performance monitoring (APM) provider Instana made money moves to further advance software construction insight with three acquisitions: BeeInstant; StackImpact; and Signify, a technology from Jinspired. Instana did not disclose the prices of the acquisitions.

SolarWinds acquired VividCortex, which provides database performance management software, for $117.5 million.

GTT Communications completed its $55.8 million all-cash acquisition of KPN International. 

Iotic snagged a $8.4 million investment from European VCs IQ Capital, Talis Capital, and Breed Reply. 

Tenable acquired industrial cybersecurity provider Indegy for $78 million in cash. 

Cloud data protection and management provider Druva announced that it surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. 

Snow Software completed its purchase of hybrid cloud management company Embotics for an undisclosed price.

NTT Data Services secured plans to purchase DevOps-based IT consultancy Flux7. No financial details of the acquisition were released. 

Israeli-based autonomous cloud workload protection platform provider Rezilion emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding led by Jerusalem Venture Partners. The funding will be used to expand its R&D team in Israel, as well as build sales operations and support in the U.S.

Ordr closed a $27.5 million Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures, with additional participation from existing investors Wing Venture Capital, 1011 Ventures, and Unusual Ventures.

Real-time analytics company Imply raised $30 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Late Stage Venture Fund with participation from Geodesic Capital and Khosla Ventures. The latest round of funding brings the company’s total funding to $45.3 million.

FirstLight Fiber acquired Massachusetts-based colocation, managed IT services, cloud solutions, and disaster recovery services provider ColoSpace.

Acronis penned a deal to acquire 5nine, which will become a fully-owned subsidiary of Acronis.

European cloud communications platform provider Voximplant secured a $10 million Series B funding round led by Baring Vostok with participation from RTP Ventures. The funding will be used to expand Voximplant’s global go-to-market capabilities, focusing initially on North America. 

OPSWAT completed its purchase of network access control (NAC) and software-defined perimeter (SDP) provider Impulse. 

Qualitest announced its acquisition of AI and machine learning company AlgoTrace. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Israeli data protection and governance startup Satori Cyber raised $5.25 million in seed funding led by YL Ventures.

EfficientIP received $11 million in Series B funding led by Jolt Capital. 

LogicGate announced $24.75 million in Series B funding co-led by Jump Capital and High Alpha Capital, with participation from Greenspring Associates and Silicon Valley Bank. 

A Cloud Guru acquired Linux Academy in a joint effort to “teach the world to cloud.”

Developer skills company HackerRank made its first acquisition in a deal to buy Mimir, a cloud-based platform for computer science courses. 

German-based Teraki, which supplies edge processing software for the automotive and IoT industries, secured $11 million in Series A funding, bringing the total capital invested to $16.3 million.  

BillingPlatform raised $10 million in Series B funding from Columbia Capital. The cloud-based monetization and billing software provider has raised $14 million from Columbia since 2017. 

Boomi, a Dell Technologies business, inked a deal to acquire Unifi Software.