Evidence since early 2022 shows that while U.S. antitrust policy under the Biden administration increased uncertainty and frictions around deals, large U.S. tech companies did not broadly “stop doing M&A” or even pause significant activity.

1. Ongoing megadeals by Big Tech: Microsoft pursued and ultimately closed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October 2023, one of the largest tech deals ever, despite intense global antitrust scrutiny. Alphabet then agreed in 2025 to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion, the largest acquisition in Google/Alphabet’s history, again in the midst of ongoing U.S. and EU antitrust actions against it. These are exactly the sort of major strategic deals Sacks suggested would be put on hold. (en.wikipedia.org)

2. Sector-level data show activity remained high: A report cited by The Register using S&P Global data found that the total number of tech/media/telecom acquisitions over $500 million was actually higher under Biden than during Trump’s first term (235 vs. 223 as of late 2024), and the median time to close such deals increased by only one day, suggesting no broad freeze in large-tech dealmaking. (theregister.com) Tech M&A value in 2023 did fall sharply—down 55% year‑over‑year—but the number of tech deals actually ticked up, with analysts emphasizing rising interest rates and post‑pandemic normalization as primary causes, not a regulatory standstill. (informationweek.com) Law‑firm and market analyses for 2022–24 still identify technology as the leading or one of the leading sectors for global M&A, including roughly $640 billion of tech deal value in 2024, indicating robust ongoing activity rather than a prolonged pause. (mofo.com)

3. There was a chill, but not a halt: Advisory and antitrust‑focused analyses do document a meaningful chilling effect: Big Tech’s share of global tech M&A volume reportedly dropped from 29% to 18% between 2021 and 2023, average antitrust‑driven delays more than doubled, and terminations of tech deals attributed to antitrust roughly doubled versus the Trump era. (winsavvy.com) A Covington & Burling review notes that the FTC and DOJ tried to “gratuitously” tax M&A and create general deterrence via burdensome procedures and rhetoric, creating real uncertainty and higher costs for transactions. (cov.com) This supports the idea that the administration raised uncertainty and reduced Big Tech’s relative appetite for some acquisitions—but it is far from the across‑the‑board cessation Sacks predicted.

Given that (a) very large strategic tech acquisitions continued, including record‑size deals by Microsoft and Alphabet; (b) overall large‑cap tech/TMT deal activity remained historically high compared with the prior administration; and (c) the documented impact of antitrust policy is a partial pullback and slower, riskier dealmaking, not a widespread halt in M&A, Sacks’s forecast that “a lot of big tech companies” would effectively stop doing M&A until clarity arrived is best characterized as wrong rather than merely imprecise or ambiguous.