Visualizing Chinese Tech Giants’ Billion-Dollar Acquisitions

With a combined $1T+ market cap, China’s big tech trio — Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT) — have formidable influence over the digital economy.

Search engine Baidu reportedly controls around 70% of the search market in China; e-commerce giant Alibaba accounts for half of all online retail sales in China; and gaming and internet giant Tencent is one of the world’s largest game publishers.

However, these 3 tech titans have also moved to expand beyond their core businesses, snapping up 158 companies over the last 2 decades across industries like autonomous driving and online food delivery.

Similarly, FAMGA (Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple) has also cut big checks — even amid Covid-19 — to grow their reach. We visualize FAMGA’s biggest acquisitions in this post.

Using CB Insights M&A data, we look at BAT’s billion-dollar acquisitions below.

Please click to enlarge.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Collectively, there have been 14 billion-dollar acquisitions by Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent to date.
• With 11 billion-dollar deals under its belt, Alibaba is by far the most active big spender out of the 3 giants. Tencent has inked 2 billion-dollar acquisitions, while Baidu has closed 1.
• The largest acquisition (by company valuation) on our timeline is Alibaba’s purchase of logistics giant Cainiao, which valued the company at $20B. Alibaba first acquired a majority stake in Cainiao in 2017, but upped its stake with an additional $3.3B investment 2 years later at an even higher valuation of $27.5B.
• Rounding out the top 3 acquisitions are video game developer Supercell, which Tencent purchased from SoftBank in 2016, and online food delivery platform Ele.me, which was acquired by Alibaba in 2018.
• Baidu’s purchase of Android app distributor 91 Wireless in 2013 was the first $1B+ buy from the trio.
• The most recent billion-dollar acquisition was Alibaba’s $1.8B acquisition of cross-border e-commerce platform Kaola. Alibaba announced at the time that it would integrate the platform with Alibaba’s own online retail arm, Tmall.
• 2019 tied with 2016 and 2014 for the most active year for $1B+ purchases, with 3 acquisitions each.

For more on tech giants, check out our infographic visualizing FAMGA’s billion-dollar acquisitions.