Microsoft spent more than $9 billion on acquisitions during the company's last fiscal year â mostly spent on its $7.5 billion GitHub acquisition, plus 19 other companies besides.Â
Analysts expect the buying spree to continue, going so far as to speculate on potential acquisition targets, including Salesforce, Twilio and Workday.
Business Insider compiled a list of the companies analysts expect Microsoft could try to buy â though it should be noted that this is all speculation, and there's no indication that anybody at Microsoft has so much as thought of buying any of these companies.
It's also worth noting most of the companies on the list cost significantly more than Microsoft has ever paid to acquire any company.
Microsoft's largest acquisition to date was paying $26.2 billion for LinkedIn; Salesforce carries a market cap of some $168 billion at the time of writing. Wedbush Securities expects Microsoft to spend around $2 billion on mergers and acquisitions this year â which is too little to buy even one of the companies on this list.
But Microsoft's rivals including Google Cloud are expected to be mulling big acquisitions to get ahead in the cloud game, which may entice the Redmond-based tech titan to open its wallet.
Here are the companies analysts expect Microsoft could buy in the coming years, including to boost the company's multibillion-dollar cloud business:Â