Analyst: Cisco’s $28B deal to buy Splunk a ‘poker move’ to fend off Microsoft, Amazon, other giants

Telecommunications and networking giant Cisco announced its largest acquisition ever on Thursday, a $28 billion cash deal to take over San Francisco-based cybersecurity and observability company Splunk.

• In a research note, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the acquisition is a “shot across the bow” at other companies offering security products including Microsoft.
• The acquisition represents a 30% premium to Splunk’s closing price Wednesday. “We will become one of the largest software companies globally,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said Thursday.
• More from Ives: “For Robbins and Cisco there is a window of opportunity to make sure that Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, Adobe, IBM and others do not own the next wave of AI driven software/cyber security and this was a well-designed strategic poker move that caught the Street off guard to get a great unique software asset at a fair multiple.”
• And more from Axios’ Dan Primack: “Legacy tech giants are usually the last to recognize they’re being disrupted, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with AI. Expect a lot more of these sorts of mergers, even if the target isn’t AI-native.”