Broadcom trying to buy SAS 👀

What happened — Global semiconductor giant Broadcom, best known to make WiFi chips for your high-end phones, is apparently trying to woo analytics software maker SAS Institute, for a $15-$20 billion acquisition.

Not everyday you see semiconductor companies buying out software players, that too entirely out of their realm. But Broadcom is quite unique.

Some context— the firm has grown to a $200 billion behemoth by gobbling up smaller semiconductor companies along the way — more than 50 in the past 2 decades.

But then, in 2018, it took the “software eating the world” thesis literally, and made a knee-jerking turn to acquire washed up, but cash-flow rich software companies.

• Purchased CA Technologies for $20 billion in 2018
• Symantec cyber security for $11 billion in 2019

And now SAS Institute.

SAS sucks — SAS by itself is facing quite the challenges too — as young modern IT teams and data analysts demand more nimble, cloud and developer friendly tools, SAS’ rigid, hard to code, and slow as a snail software has been deemed a fossil!

But Broadcom perhaps sees a steal, mostly for its wide distribution, which can be a Trojan horse for more of its products to follow.