Each passing year the tech industry is turned upside down by acquisitions, and 2025 was no different. From multibillion dollar deals for companies like Wiz and CyberArk, to startups joining big boys like AMD and Marvell, this year didn’t disappoint when it came to some major mergers and acquisitions.
Here’s a look back at some of the biggest deals of 2025.
Palo Alto Networks x CyberArk
Cost: $25 billion
Expected closure date: Mid-2026
Palo Alto Networks’ largest financial bet to date – which in itself is saying something, considering the vendor’s storied history of acquisitions – the deal for CyberArk would see it take one step closer to becoming an all-in-one platform. Add to that, deals for AI security firm Protect AI and observability platform Chronosphere, and the vendor has set itself up to take on a starring role in the cybersecurity world upon closing.
Efforts to get the deal over the line are already underway, with Palo Alto Networks having requested clearance for the deal in Germany back in November. It’s expected to close sometime during the second half of Palo Alto Networks' fiscal 2026, and, if approved, would be the second-largest cybersecurity acquisition ever, surpassed only by Google’s ongoing efforts to snap up Wiz for $32 billion.
Read more on the Palo Alto Networks acquisition of CyberArk:
Palo Alto Networks to snap up CyberArk in $20B+ mega deal
Can Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora cash-in the CyberArk bet?
Palo Alto Networks seeks German approval for $25B CyberArk acquisition
Arm x DreamBig Semiconductor
Cost: $265 million
Expected closure date: March 2026
While no way near as big financially as the acquisition above, Arm’s purchase of DreamBig is huge as it’ll see the chip design giant extend its reach into the world of networking. DreamBig offers SuperNICs designed to support intensive AI workloads, with the firm claiming its hardware can connect GPUs with “unparalleled efficiency.”
Founded in 2019 by Sohail Syed, a former senior director of engineering at Marvell Semiconductor, DreamBig’s network accelerator features a remote direct memory access (RDMA) engine to support both RoCE v2 and UEC standards – offering 800 Gb/s of bandwidth and 800 Mb/s of throughput.
An Arm spokesperson told SDxCentral back in November: “As demand grows inside the data center, particularly in high-speed communications, [DreamBig’s] technology will play an important role in broadening Arm’s offerings to end customers.”
Read more on Arm’s acquisition of DreamBig:
Arm to acquire AI networking chipmaker DreamBig in $265M deal
Marvell Technology x Celestial AI
Cost: $3.25 billion
Expected closure date: Early 2026
December saw Marvell unveil plans to pick up Celestial, a Santa Clara, California-based firm developing photonic interconnects. Having secured backing from AMD, BlackRock, and Koch Disruptive Technologies and with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan on its board, Celestial has quickly developed its Photonic Fabric, a co-packaged optics (CPO) offering. The firm claims it’s capable of up to a 25-times increase in off-package bandwidth compared to rival hardware.
More on Marvell’s deal to buy Celestial AI:
Marvell confirms multi-billion dollar deal to acquire Celestial AI
Nvidia x SchedMD
Cost: Undisclosed
Expected closure date: Closed December 2025
The latest acquisition on this list, Nvidia’s fourth and final deal of the year saw it "slurp up" the team behind the Slurm open source workload management system, SchedMD.
Despite the notoriously proprietary Nvidia picking up SchedMD, the company confirmed it would continue to support Slurm as an open source offering, ensuring teams have an open way to perform resource management for their AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. The SchedMD deal follows purchases for CentML, Lepton AI, and Gretel, the latter of which has been rebranded as DGX Cloud Lepton.
Read more on Nvidia’s Slurm acquisition:
Nvidia acquires Slurm developers SchedMD to boost AI, HPC workload optimization
AMD x ZT Systems
Cost: $4.9 billion
Expected closure date: Closed March 2025
Earlier this year, AMD completed its multibillion-dollar purchase of ZT Systems, a move aimed at accelerating development of its rack-scale systems for cloud and enterprise AI deployments.
AMD would later sell ZT Systems’ manufacturing arm while retaining design and integration capabilities.
The ZT purchase was then buoyed by the addition of MK1, a software startup focused on high-speed AI inference and reasoning.
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