This research comes from the March 11 edition of the CB Insights newsletter. You can see past newsletters and sign up for future ones here.
Small teams are getting big payouts.
That’s what the M&A data for 2025 says.
Using CB Insights M&A transaction and headcount data for Q1’25 so far, we found that tech companies acquired for $100M or more had just 100 employees at the median.
Our analysts dove into the tech M&A landscape in a live briefing on March 18 — download the recording here.
We zoomed in on the companies exiting with teams of 100 employees or under, and they’re typically:
- young (7 years old on average)
- bootstrapped (a majority have raised under $20M in equity funding)
See the top 10 by valuation-to-employee ratio below.
CBI customers can explore these 10 startups here.
The top exit by that metric went to Voyage AI, which offers embedding models and ranking tools to improve AI search and retrieval.
With just 19 employees and a price tag of $220M — up 2x since its funding round last September — Voyage AI’s sale to MongoDB equated to $11.6M per employee.
Bon voyage
For MongoDB, Voyage AI represents an opportunity to own more of the AI development process and build customer trust, specifically around output reliability.
Source: CB Insights — MongoDB Q4 FY 2025 earnings call
This is one of the main hurdles to broader AI adoption.
In a December 2024 survey we conducted on AI agents — the clear next evolution for enterprise genAI deployment — nearly half (47%) of respondents cited reliability & security as a top obstacle.
To address this concern, platforms that help businesses organize, maintain, and leverage their data effectively will become even more important.
Acquisition radar
MongoDB isn’t the only one acquiring AI startups to stitch together more unified AI development tools.
Data management giants Databricks and Snowflake have been on AI acquisition sprees, acquiring 5 AI startups a piece since 2023 — more than any other acquirers globally.
The question is: Who’s next?
We expect the next wave of AI M&A targets to be those building out AI agent infrastructure.
Drilling down further, there are 47 startups with teams of 100 employees or less.
The most likely M&A targets, ranked using CB Insights’ Exit Probability, are:
Source: CB Insights — Platform search of AI agent infrastructure startups
Another top contender is Unstructured, in the data curation space — the company has received previous backing from the venture arms of both MongoDB and Databricks.
Customers can unlock the full list of AI agent infra targets here.
RELATED RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS:
- Tech M&A Predictions for 2025
- Databricks wants to be a one-stop shop for AI. Here’s how it plans to get there
- Our 6 predictions for the insurance space in 2025
- State of Venture 2024 Report
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