SA国际传媒

Huge companies in fast-changing, technology-intensive businesses buy startups. After all, they have the money and need fresh entrepreneurial talent to tap new markets and stay abreast of disruption.

That鈥檚 the collective聽wisdom about M&A in venture capital and startup circles. It鈥檚 also how the venture business survives. Though IPOs may , acquisitions account for the vast majority of startup exits and a majority of venture returns.

But what if the common wisdom isn鈥檛 true? What if companies could do perfectly well adjusting to changing conditions, beating competitors, and sustaining enormous market capitalizations without buying scrappy startups?

These Giants Will Pass On Your Startup, Thank You Very Much

To delve into that hypothesis, we used SA国际传媒 data to help assemble a list of the least acquisitive large-cap companies. The primary focus was technology companies, but we included other sectors since leaders in retail, consumer products, shipping and pretty much any other industry also invest heavily in tech.

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The resultant list shows that many companies with reputations as innovators actually don鈥檛 do much M&A. Some did in the past but have cut back or stopped in recent years. Others have never shown an appetite for acquisitions.

Here are some of the most recognizable names on our list of big companies least likely to buy your startup:

Netflix

Netflix does seem like the kind of company that would do a lot of acquiring. It has a valuation around $60 billion, an innovative, risk-taking corporate culture, and investors who are comfortable with the company trading at a high multiple relative to earnings. Yet according to SA国际传媒 data, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming video giant has never bought a startup (at least not a disclosed purchase).

While Netflix doesn鈥檛 buy startups, it does have a history of spending generously on content and licensing deals. Earlier this month, the company struck its first licensing deal in China with the streaming platform . It鈥檚 also entered into licensing deals with a long list of Hollywood studios, including Netflix, NBC Universal, and others.

Nvidia

Shares of the graphics chipmaker have been on a tear for the past year, and the company鈥檚 market value recently surged past $60 billion.

Yet the Silicon Valley company has only made one acquisition in the past six years, after a prior pace of about a deal a year. The last time it made a disclosed acquisition was 2015, and that was a tiny deal, paying $3.75 million to acquire seed-funded cloud gaming startup TransGaming.

Between 2002 and 2011, SA国际传媒 shows Nvidia making about one acquisition a year, including some large deals. For its last big purchase, in 2011, the company bought , a developer of mobile broadband modem technology, for $367 million.

It鈥檚 hard to make a case that not buying startups has been bad for Nvidia鈥檚 competitiveness. The company posted a 50 percent revenue surge for the second straight quarter in its last earnings report. Its net income for the past year totaled nearly $1.7 billion.

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments is one of those companies that no one in Silicon Valley talks about. Perhaps that鈥檚 because it鈥檚 based in Dallas, has been around since the 1950s, and has a brand famously associated with 1970s calculators. Nonetheless, Texas Instruments is a big player in the semiconductor space, with a valuation around $80 billion and profit of about $8 billion a year. It鈥檚 also not very acquisitive these days.

The last time Texas Instruments made a disclosed acquisition, according to SA国际传媒 data, was 2011, when it bought for $6.5 billion. 聽Maybe TI is still digesting that giant purchase. Before buying National Semiconductor, TI was reasonably acquisitive, buying about 10 companies from 2002 to 2011, including some venture-backed startups. But it hasn鈥檛 been back to the table in a long time.

Applied Materials

Applied Materials is another company that used to do acquisitions fairly often but hasn鈥檛 made a new one in years. Like Texas Instruments, Applied鈥檚 last big acquisition was enormous. The company paid $4.9 billion in 2011 for , a developer of semiconductor processing equipment. For a company with a market capitalization north of $40 billion, Applied has never been particularly acquisitive. But six years is a long dry spell.

Although it hasn鈥檛 been buying startups, Applied Materials has been investing in them. Its corporate VC arm, Applied Ventures, has participated in at least 46 funding rounds since 2006, including several in the past year.

The Home Depot

We all know Home Depot sells flooring, drills, and other tools; therefore, it isn鈥檛 expected to be snapping up quantum computing startups. But a lot of startup innovation happens in retail as well, so one might expect a retailer valued at $180 billion to buy a few venture-backed companies to stay competitive.

That hasn鈥檛 been the case. According to SA国际传媒, the last time Home Depot snagged a startup was five years ago. The hardware retail chain聽bought , an early-stage developer of pricing software that had previously raised a couple million dollars. The same year, it also bought , a site for getting price quotes and finding professionals to work on one鈥檚 home.

Other companies with massive valuations that aren鈥檛 much into buying startups these days include UPS, Procter & Gamble and Citigroup. All have the financial resources for more M&A, just not the appetite.

Strategic Abstention

One conclusion to take away from track records of these non-acquisitive companies is that buying startups may be more a strategic preference than a necessity. It鈥檚 obvious many large-cap tech companies鈥擥oogle, Microsoft, Oracle, and Facebook, to name a few鈥攈ave a history of both acquiring a lot of startups and sustaining massive valuations. But clearly, that鈥檚 not the only way to stay on top.