# What is the best tech acquisition of all time?

> Billion-dollar bets that look obvious now and looked reckless at the time.

*By YPB Team · Published August 6, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-tech-acquisition-of-all-time*

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## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Google buys YouTube**
   $1.65bn in stock in 2006 for a video site that had existed for 20 months.
2. **Facebook buys Instagram**
   $1bn in 2012 for a photo app with 13 employees and no revenue.
3. **Google buys Android**
   Roughly $50m in 2005 for the operating system now on most phones alive.
4. **Apple buys NeXT**
   $429m in 1996, which brought back Steve Jobs and the basis of macOS.
5. **Facebook buys WhatsApp**
   $19bn in 2014 for a messaging app with 55 employees.
6. **Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard**
   $68.7bn closed in 2023, the largest deal in gaming history.
7. **Microsoft buys GitHub**
   $7.5bn in 2018 for the place most of the world's code lives.
8. **Microsoft buys LinkedIn**
   $26.2bn in 2016 for the professional network and its data.
9. **Disney buys Pixar**
   $7.4bn in 2006, which handed Disney back its animation department.
10. **Disney buys Marvel**
   $4bn in 2009 for a character library that has since made many times that.
11. **Amazon buys Twitch**
   $970m in 2014 for the platform where games are watched, not played.
12. **Amazon buys Whole Foods**
   $13.7bn in 2017, which put Amazon into physical grocery overnight.
13. **Apple buys Beats**
   $3bn in 2014 for headphones and the streaming service that became Apple Music.
14. **IBM buys Red Hat**
   $34bn in 2019, a bet that enterprise software would run on open source.
15. **Nvidia buys Mellanox**
   $6.9bn in 2020 for the networking that now wires AI data centres together.
16. **Elon Musk buys Twitter**
   $44bn in 2022, later written down by a large fraction of that.

Tags: brands, tech, business