CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday he wanted IBM to buy data analytics firm Qlik Technologies, but Big Blue has missed its chance.
Qlik announced Thursday it had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $30.50 a share, or about $3 billion, in cash.
"Business intelligence is something I want IBM to move into more aggressively, and I wanted them to buy it," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."
Qlik is the latest firm to be acquired by a private equity company this week.
On Tuesday, marketing software maker Marketo said it agreed to be bought out by San Francisco private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.
"All these companies hate it when you say they are similar because they obviously think they are unique, but Qlik ... analyze[s] big data, and these companies do take big data and they do analyze it," Cramer said.
The stock popped nearly 4 percent, closing at $30.08, but analysts at Macquarie Capital downgraded the stock to neutral from outperform after the deal was announced.
"The deal price announced is higher than the price cited by Reuters on May 31st as the likely take-out price ($28-30/share), but is below where we believed a PE entity was likely to show minimum interest (~$32/share) as we outlined in our initiation on March 3rd , we feel undervaluing the company," Macquarie Capital said in a Thursday note to clients.
Disclosure: Cramer's trust did not own Marketo, Qlik or IBM stock when this story was published.
— CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report.