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It s been a head-scratchingly prolific year for the flow of money in Silicon Valley and the grander startup ecosystem. With many IPOs hitting their targets despite a global pandemic or perhaps with help from it it s no surprise that companies have continued to pursue the exit strategy of acquisition. Deal flow was down slightly from 2019, and certainly from 2018 but still, some very notable mergers and acquisitions weren t hindered by the economic uncertainty brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some of the biggest deals took place between companies that were already public such as Salesforce s $27.7 billion mega-acquisition of Slack, which had gone public in 2019. Uber seemed keen to buy already-public Grubhub but then in July, European take-out giant Just Eat Takeaway swooped in, acquiring it for $7.3 billion and creating the largest food-delivery company outside of China. Then there was the biggest deal of the decade, in whic