When startups are acquired, the deal is either a home run for investors, a distressed, money-losing sale, or something in between.
These intermediate outputs don’t generate much noise, but together they add as much as a tidy sum. Last 12 months, for example, US startups bought lower than $300 million 1 they brought in a total of about $8.7 billion, based on Crunchbase data.
In many respects, these small and mid-sized deals are not a long-term growth area for M&A. The total value of deals involving purchases ranging from $100 million to $300 million last 12 months was still below levels routinely achieved almost a decade ago, as shown below.
Moreover, the total value could also be just a fraction of a single, larger output. Google‘S just accomplished A $32 billion purchase Wizardfor example, it is value greater than 4 times all deals value lower than $300 million combined.
Nevertheless, we have recovered from previous lows. Buying in this space by startups bottomed out a few years ago and has since rebounded, and this 12 months has also began off briskly.
Smaller deals shrink more
Smaller acquisitions at a disclosed price of lower than $100 million are also well below their peak. The volume and value of those transactions bottomed out in 2024 and have since recovered somewhat, as shown in the chart below.
These sub-$100 million purchases are a mixed bag of returns. Investors can recoup solid returns from corporations that raised several million in seed funding and sold them for prices in the tens of hundreds of thousands.
In other cases, startups sold for much lower than the sums they raised in enterprise investments. Using Crunchbase data, we collected several examples of such transactions from the past 12 months. It includes corporations with known struggles, resembling: Rad Power Bikeswhich filed for bankruptcy this month before being sold to a buyer.
No power buyers
It is value noting that there is no “energy buyer” for purchases by small and medium-sized start-ups. Of the 181 startup acquisitions valued at lower than $300 million since 2024, no acquirer has made greater than two such deals, based on Crunchbase data.
That said, there are corporations with more funded startup purchases, but no reported prices for all or most. Examples include Cisco, Cloudflare, CoreWeave, Data cubes, Eli Lilly, Working day AND Wonderamong others.
When the price is not disclosed, it is difficult to evaluate how the founders and investors handled the deal. That said, most more lively buyers can definitely afford to pay well. Whether they resolve to do so is one other matter.
*This only applies to purchases at disclosed prices. Most startup acquisitions have no disclosed price.