2H 2022 Technology M&A Report

Not going to sugarcoat it. The technology industry got walloped in 2022. A day of reckoning. As CNN summed it up in a headline, “The Year That Brought Silicon Valley Down to Earth.” Ouch. But don’t give up. Tech can swing on a pendulum. Cooler heads may win the day in the long run. In 2022, we saw a perfect storm batter the industry. Interest rates for those who wanted cheap money to speculate went from near zero to 4.5% (anyone believe Fed head Jay Powell is in the mood to stop?), tech companies shed workers, a tech darling was sentenced to prison (Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes), and a tech wunderkind was arrested (FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried). The tech-heavy NASDAQ plunged 30%, the S&P 500’s technology sector did about the same, while global venture funding in the third quarter fell to its lowest level in more than two years ($74 billion isn’t nothing, but still).