What Microsoft bought
Microsoft has made some of the biggest tech buys ever. One — a game maker — cost as much as the other five combined.
Six deals, in the order the money left.
Skype, 2011, $8.5bn. The video-calling service, shut down in 2025. Its tech fed into Teams.
Nokia's phone business, 2014, $7.2bn. Within two years Microsoft wrote off $7.6bn — nearly all of it — and left phones.
LinkedIn, 2016, $26.2bn. The professional network, Microsoft's biggest deal for seven years.
GitHub, 2018, $7.5bn. Where most of the world's code lives.
Nuance, 2022, $19.7bn. Speech recognition and healthcare AI, almost unknown outside IT.
Activision Blizzard, 2023, $68.7bn. Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush. Nearly two years and regulators on three continents to close.
The shape worth noticing: the other five add up to about $69bn. Activision alone was $68.7bn. One deal, the size of the other five.
Two caveats. These are announced values, not what was ultimately paid or written off — Nokia and Skype are the obvious cases. The $138bn is these six added up, not Microsoft's total M&A.
Next week: the one on this chart Microsoft wrote off almost entirely.
