Top Ten Tech M&A Transactions This Week by Ascento 2/27/26

Ascento Capital Invest @ www.techbanking.com

Deal of the Week

2/24/26 Fintech giant Stripe circles possible PayPal acquisition: Bloomberg

Stripe, the payment processor that has increasingly leaned into crypto, is interested in acquiring all or part of PayPal, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

The private company "has expressed preliminary interest in a potential acquisition of the digital payments pioneer or its assets," the report said, citing anonymous sources.

Stripe said Tuesday it has signed agreements with investors to provide liquidity to current and former Stripe employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation. Investors, including Thrive Capital, Coatue, and a16z, will provide the majority of funds for the tender offer. Stripe would also utilize some of its own capital to repurchase shares.

TechCrunch

2/25/26 Apple Absorbs Open Source Photonics Platform In Strategic Acqui-Hire

Apple has acquired open-source photonics startup invrs.io and hired its founder, bringing community-built AI design tools in-house to accelerate next-generation hardware development.

Open-source technology sits at the heart of Apple’s latest acquisition. The company has purchased certain assets of invrs.io, a one-person startup known for developing open-source frameworks for photonics research, and hired its sole employee and founder.

Open Source

2/25/26 Harbinger acquires autonomous driving company Phantom AI

Electric trucking startup Harbinger has acquired autonomous driving software company Phantom AI, in an effort to vertically integrate more technology and create new revenue streams for the young company.

The acquisition, which is Harbinger’s first, is part of the startup’s plan to steadily expand its portfolio beyond the electric truck chassis it’s been building and selling for the last year. Just last month, Harbinger announced it would start selling its battery packs for energy storage and auxiliary power, with Airstream as the first customer.

Tech Crunch

2/24/26 Frisco-Based GameSquare To Acquire Creator Tech Platform TubeBuddy

Frisco’s GameSquare Holdings, a next-gen media, entertainment, technology, and onchain treasury company, has agreed to acquire TubeBuddy, an AI-enabled software and workflow platform for creators and brands focused on optimizing YouTube channel performance and audience growth, from BENlabs.

Powered by proprietary AI, TubeBuddy provides powerful search engine optimization, workflow, analytics, and productivity tools, which creators and digital publishers use to grow, manage, and monetize their content. The acquisition adds a scaled creator technology component to GameSquare’s technology platform with the goal of accelerating the growth of its integrated ecosystem that includes content, community, data, and performance marketing, the company said.

• EV/Sales: 1.1x

• EV/EBITDA: 5.9x

Dallas Innovates

2/24/26 Capillary Technologies to acquire Mastercard’s Session M for $20mn

Loyalty management platform operator Capillary Technologies India late Tuesday announced the acquisition of Mastercard-owned Session M, in an all–cash $20 million deal.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company, which went public in November 2025, will invest into Session M Inc and related entity Session M Czech Republic, through Capillary Pte Ltd, as per a stock exchange disclosure.

• EV/Sales: 0.4x

The Times of India

2/23/26 Cube enhances automated regulatory intelligence solution with 4CRisk.ai acquisition

UK regtech Cube has announced the acquisition of a US-based competitor 4CRisk.ai. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Established in 2019, 4CRisk uses AI to scan organisations’ policies and procedures and connects them with regulatory requirements. In its announcement, Cube says that 4CRisk’s approach “produces highly accurate results up to 50 times faster than equivalent manual processes”. 

Fintech Futures

2/23/26 Pure Storage CEO On Everpure Name Change And 1Touch Acquisition

“The name Everpure represents the next step as we continue to not only redefine storage, but now redefine data management at scale,” said CEO Charles Giancarlo, unveiling Pure Storage’s rebranding today.

The company has changed its name today to Everpure in a move CEO Charles Giancarlo (pictured) says better represents his Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s modern technology stack and storage data management future.

CRN

2/23/26 Nvidia acquires Israeli AI startup Illumex for $60 million

The Israeli company’s Generative Semantic Fabric (GSF) platform transforms an enterprise's organizational corpus of knowledge into AI-ready, context-rich business language embedded into semantic ontologies.

Nvidia has acquired Israeli startup Illumex, Calcalist has learned. Financial terms were not disclosed, though the deal is estimated to be in the region of $60 million. The company has raised about $13 million to date in a Seed round.

CTech

2/23/26 Canva acquires startups working on animation and marketing

On Monday, creative suite maker Canva announced the dual acquisition of startups Cavalry, which works on animation, and MangoAI, which works on improving ad performance.

U.K.-based Cavalry works on 2D motion animation for different verticals such as advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Canva said that Cavalry’s tooling will add to the existing capabilities of Affinity, Canva’s professional creative editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts, which it acquired in 2024.

Tech Crunch

2/23/26 Uber to Acquire Parking App SpotHero

Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) and SpotHero, Inc. today announced that they have reached an agreement for Uber to acquire SpotHero, bringing parking reservations onto the Uber app

Uber plans to offer a native, in-app parking reservation experience, powered by SpotHero, with a focus on parking for commuters, as well as at events, venues, and airports. In time, Uber One members can also expect to see parking benefits as part of their membership.

Uber Investor