M&A 활동: 기술 인수자 및 AI 솔루션

### 2022년 기술 M&A 동향 및 전망
* 📈 "현재 벤처 지원 기술 기업의 인수자는 **사모펀드, 전통적인 기술 인수자, 비 전통적인 기술 인수자 등 크게 세 그룹**으로 나뉘는데, 현재 시장에는 많은 낙관론이 있습니다."
* 💸 금리 상승에도 불구하고 **올해 1분기 사모펀드의 투자 활동은 점점 더 활발**해지고 있습니다.
* 💰 호황의 첫 해를 보냈던 전통적인 기술 인수 기업들은 이제 **현재 수준에서 현금을 지출할 의향이 더 높습니다.**
* 💡 "**창업자와 이사회의 희생을 이해하지 못하는 구매자**는 자신이 인수하려는 회사를 이해하지 못하는 것입니다."
* 🛍 다양한 분야의 비기술 기업들이 경쟁력을 유지하기 위해 **AI와 같은 기술 솔루션**을 점점 더 많이 도입하고 있습니다.
* 🤖 많은 기업이 자사 제품에 AI를 추가하고 있지만, 이러한 기업의 수가 제한되어 있어 **근본적인 AI 플랫폼 수준에서 통합이 충분히 이루어지지 않**고 있습니다.
* 🔮 인공지능과 인공지능 플랫폼 기업에 대한 막대한 투자에도 불구하고 **플랫폼 차원의 엑시트 및 통합은 부족**합니다.

사모펀드와 전통적인 기술 인수업체들은 낙관론과 M&A 활동의 증가에 힘입어 벤처 지원 기술 기업 인수에 점점 더 적극적으로 나서고 있습니다.

It's been an interesting few weeks, actually, in the world of M&A, particularly when I speak to venture capitalists. They might actually be more upbeat than some of their later stage venture-backed companies are more likely to be acquired than go public. That there is kind of some energy there. Is that something that you see from your desk as well? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think that there's a lot of optimism in the market right now. If you look at the last 3 to 4 years, you obviously had a massive uptick in 21 and 22, and that dropped off precipitously with valuations dropping in 22 and 22, all of 2023, and to some extent at the beginning of this year. And we have, you know, probably three major groups of acquirers that will acquire venture-backed technology companies. You have private equity, traditional tech acquirers.

And what I like to refer to as non-traditional tech acquirers, those are older industries. You know, looking at private equity, obviously the rise in interest rates made them nervous. But if you go back in history, private equity is very used to operating at double-digit interest rates. So have they dusted off their old playbooks, reminded themselves, how do we do this again? Absolutely. And they've become increasingly active in the first two quarters of this year going to traditional tech acquirers. A lot of them sat out the first couple of years of the boom. They didn't want to spend cash at that level. They didn't want to, you know, use the. Let me. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no, I'm sorry. I just wanted to jump in and ask about you know, there's the mechanics of it using cash. I particularly understand the private equity side of that equation.

There's also like a little bit of a psychological side of any transaction. What's interesting about your firm is you're on both sides of the table, right? Buyer and seller. What are attitudes right now to sitting down and hashing out a deal? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we work with our clients right now a lot on is both for traditional and non-traditional traditional tech acquirers, understanding the mindset of founders and of boards. You know, in a lot of instances, these are companies that were two individuals in a garage. They've grown their companies to multibillion dollar companies, but along the way, they've underpaid themselves. They haven't bought houses, they haven't gotten married, they haven't had children. You know, they haven't gone on vacation. And any buyer that loses sight of that isn't understanding the company that they're buying. So something really interesting is

happening in what I would call non-tech
companies as well, right. This idea that in a world of AI, for
example, as we just discussed that new Kleiner Perkins fund, you've got to have
some sort of it or your investor base so your employees won't believe you and
they'll leave. And I see that happening in all kinds of
sectors. You know, oil and gas, utilities, even construction, saying,
oh, we better buy a solution here. That must be a boon for business, too.
That's exactly right. And you really have two separate things
going on here. So first, speaking specifically to AI,
I think it's a mischaracterization to say that there's a lot of AI M&A activity.
There aren't enough AI platform companies for there to be consolidation.
Now, there are a lot of companies that do something else.
They do cybersecurity. Maybe they are in our platform.
Maybe it's a fintech company.

You know, are they adding AI to what
they do to improve their products? Absolutely.
Those products are getting smarter. They're going faster. They're more
attractive to their customer base. But those aren't fundamental AI
platforms. You know, on the flip side, the
other thing that we're seeing is a lot of, as you said, some nontraditional
tech acquirers come deeper into the tech space.
Another area where they're doing that is cybersecurity.
If you go back to the beginning of the pandemic, everybody may remember there
was a massive pipeline hack on the Eastern seaboard that woke up a lot of
the oil and gas companies to say, we have not invested enough in technology,
we've not invested enough in cybersecurity and protecting these
infrastructure projects. And so a lot of companies, in theory,
could build those solutions or cybersecurity solutions.
But some older industries are not equipped to do that.
So what do they do?

They go out and buy them wholesale.
They buy a company to create a product just for them.
And so that's what a lot of some of these older industries. It could be oil
and gas. It could be agriculture. You know, to some extent, even banking
is still behind the ball for some of these technologies.
Ali, what you just said on consolidation is really interesting.
It almost contradicts kind of what we'd been hearing, what I wrote about a few
weeks ago, which was based on comments from hugging face that, you know,
hugging face is a platform that hosts loads of large language model providers
and the smaller players needed help. They've run out of cash.
It's an expensive enterprise. You seem to be saying that actually at
the platform level that isn't happening because there aren't enough platform
level providers right now. Just give me a bit more on that.
Yeah. So to be clear, there is a ton of
investment going into AI and AI platform

companies 100%, and I think you see that
with the Kleiner Perkins fund that was just announced, but.
What you're not seeing is the exits. There aren't enough of those companies
for there to be consolidation. Yes, absolutely.
There are some, but not to the volume that you see in other subsectors of
tech.

M&A Activity Trends in Tech and AI

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벤처 캐피털리스트들은 기업 공개보다 후기 단계의 벤처 지원 기업을 인수하는 것에 더 낙관적입니다.

올해 1분기에는 사모펀드, 전통적 기술 인수자, 비전통적 기술 인수자가 주도하는 인수가 크게 증가했습니다.

사모펀드는 금리 상승에 대한 불안감에도 불구하고 점점 더 적극적으로 인수에 나서고 있으며, 전통적인 기술 인수 기업들은 높은 수준의 현금 지출을 기꺼이 감수하고 있습니다.

비즈니스 거래에 대한 현재의 태도

기업들은 이제 창업자와 이사회의 사고방식을 이해하는 데 초점을 맞추고 있으며, 특히 많은 사람들이 회사 성장을 위해 개인적인 성취를 희생해 온 기술 업계에서 더욱 그러합니다.

투자자와 직원 모두를 유지하기 위해 어떤 형태로든 AI 또는 기술 통합의 중요성은 다양한 분야에서 널리 퍼지고 있습니다.

그러나 통합을 위한 AI 플랫폼 기업의 부족으로 인해 AI 인수합병(M&A) 활동 수준에 대한 오해가 존재합니다.

AI가 제품 개발 및 기술 확보에 미치는 영향

아직 근본적인 AI 플랫폼 수준에는 이르지 못했지만, AI는 제품을 크게 개선하여 고객에게 더 빠르고 더 매력적으로 보이도록 만들고 있습니다.

특히 사이버 보안과 같은 기술 분야에서는 자체 기술 솔루션을 구축할 준비가 되어 있지 않은 기존 산업에서 제품을 개발하기 위해 기업을 인수하는 비전통적인 기술 인수자가 점점 더 많이 등장하고 있습니다.

AI 및 AI 플랫폼에 대한 투자는 상당하지만 플랫폼 수준에서는 충분한 공급자가 부족합니다.

클라이너 퍼킨스 펀드는 기술 기업에 초점을 맞춘 펀드로 발표되었지만 통합을 위한 출구가 부족합니다.

이는 기업 통합이 많은 다른 기술 하위 분야와는 다른 양상입니다.

이러한 통합의 부족은 기술 업계에 도전 과제가 되고 있습니다.