It doesn't matter. The board and CEO will _never_ listen to the CIO and technical team. If they want to do an acquisition, they'll do it. I've seen this at least a dozen times in my 36 year career.
I keep coming back to from the board and CEO's perspective they have a choice, spend a lot of their time and effort to gain market share by investing in their own company. Or acquiring it through an acquisition.
Seems like an acquisition is a lot less hassle and risk. And can be done quickly. Most 'problems' can be made to go away by throwing money and fixers at them.
This doesn't always work, see HPE vs Autonomy. That case is incredibly interesting for an insight into how idiotic and lazy execs can be. Usually though, it works out for them, probably by luck. Would be, err, "interesting" if there were more Mike Lynch around to provide similar insight (Autonomy's CEO). Then again, the case is interesting as HPE was willing to litigate, and a certain British tech news outlet picked it up.