Two major tech accquisitions were announced today, indicating that a post-election M&A bounceback may have begun earlier than expected.
Earlier today, Snyk, a Boston-headquartered developer security specialist, told the world it had acquired Probely, a Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) provider based in Porto, Portugal, which focuses on API security testing and keeping web applications safe.
In a separate deal, the American open-source maven Red Hat inked a deal with Somerville's Neural Magic, which its proud new owner described as a "pioneer in software and algorithms that accelerate generative AI (gen AI) inference workloads.
Several surveys have indicated growing positivity around tech M&A, with research from Morrison Foerster and ION Analytics indicating that tech bounceback has started, with a "resurgence" in merger activity during the first nine months of 2024 leading to 6,500 deals and an "impressive" 39% surge in deal value to $482 billion.
Snyk probes the DAST market
Probely offers a range of tools, including Security Headers, which is designed to help users to "quickly understand and benchmark the security of their web properties".
It also provides Discovery and Scanning tools which can identify whether applications or APIs contain exploitable vulnerabilities to "give AppSec teams increased confidence that they have coverage of their application and API footprint while helping developers reduce time spent on lower priority risks" - a function that will become ever more important apps and AI tools become increasingly reliant on APIs.
“For global security leaders seeking to further accelerate trusted AI adoption, adding Probely’s technology and expertise further extends the breadth and depth of Snyk’s platform,” said Peter McKay, CEO, Snyk. “Together, we’re looking forward to pushing our market forward with our shared developer-first vision that effectively balances rapid innovation with security guardrails.”
On LinkedIn, James Berthoty, a "security engineer turned industry analyst" with Latio Tech, said the team at Probely is "really good at dynamic testing from the outside" and could "claw out a little budget from Tenable and Qualys".
"Snyk is focusing more and more on selling to the enterprise," he wrote. "DAST has been a gap with Snyk from day one and was filled by the excellent partnership with StackHawk who took a similar approach to Snyk with pipeline based, fast, and accurate scanning. Snyk could no longer afford to have this gap when many competitors offer it - it's a pointless way to lose an RFP."
Tristan Kalos, CEO of Escape, also wrote: " Snyk's moves show that DAST is part of AppSec's future, not its past. There is a demand for solutions that can evaluate the security of software from the attacker's point of view
"Enterprise companies want DAST, not only SCA and SAST. They also have huge need for scalability, which has always been hard to achieve for modern AppSec solutions."
If the Red Hat fits...
Red Hat acquired Neural Magic to strengthen its AI portfolio and leverage its expertise in accelerating generative AI inference and optimizing large language models (LLMs) for deployment across hybrid cloud environments.
Neural Magic’s software and inference performance engineering align with Red Hat’s open-source approach, enabling AI models to operate efficiently and securely across any infrastructure, ranging from corporate data centres to edge computing.
Red Hat said that by integrating Neural Magic’s technology, it can enhance its AI platforms, including OpenShift AI and RHEL AI, to give customers a scalable, open-source ecosystem for building and deploying customized, high-performance AI models that are both secure and operationally effective.
Matt Hicks, President and CEO, Red Hat, said: "AI workloads need to run wherever customer data lives across the hybrid cloud; this makes flexible, standardized and open platforms and tools a necessity, as they enable organizations to select the environments, resources and architectures that best align with their unique operational and data needs."
The tech sector has been hit by a "painful" M&A slowdown ever since the pandemic forced billions of people to shelter in place. Let's hope the good times are starting to roll again as we move into 2025.
