Alphabet's recent $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm WIS setting records, and it could signal a turning point for slow M&A markets.

Kate Rooney has more in today's tech check segment.

Morning, Kate.

Hey, Sarah, that's where we're here.

So Google's deal for WIS, that is certainly the outlier at that price.

It does mark a record for venture-backed startup sales, but smaller

deal-making activity is also steadily picking up in Silicon Valley. So far this year, there have been

11 acquisitions worth more than a billion dollars, as according to CB Insights. That's a total of

$54.5 billion. If you compare that to what we saw this time a year ago, the first few months of

2024 saw only two deals of that size at a total 3.2 billion. Poppy is one of the recent

deals. The venture backed soda startup is being bought by Pepsi for about $2 billion, soft bank,

meanwhile buying Amper, computing for $6.5 billion. And then there has

been another AI deal, Spree Corrieve. Company said to go public is buying weights and biases for

about $2 billion, $1.7 billion, and then service now scooping up Moveworks for $2.9 billion,

roughly. There are still about a thousand other startups above that $1 billion

mark. Venture investors I'm talking to out here on the West Coast do expect this recent deal

spree to continue. I've talked to a couple folks this morning who say they were busy signing term

sheets over the weekend. And that prolonged deal drought that I mentioned is one dynamics folks

are pointing to here.

So potential buyers have a lot more cash to deploy since they hadn't been doing deals for quite a while.

And then a lot of these offers I'm hearing from are coming for some of the bigger strategic buyers.

The deals do take months to negotiate.

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