If such a deal were to happen, the cost would likely be pretty substantial, involving some significant premium over the current value.
While Google/Alphabet has been extremely acquisitive over the years, the largest deal that it’s ever made was spending $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2011.
More recently the largest deal involved spending $5.4 billion for security intelligence platform Mandiant in 2022.
Google usually stays under $3 billion, so a deal of this scope would be very much out of character for the company.
Another issue the company could face in trying to buy HubSpot is a hostile regulatory environment for large deals.
When it comes to funding, the fintech sector didn’t have a very good start to the year.
Fintech funding slid by 16% quarter-over-quarter during the three-month period, according to CB Insights’ Q1 2024 State of Venture Report.
But even more troubling than the double-digit dip was the fact that the $7.3 billion raised globally by fintech startups in the three-month period marked the lowest level the sector has seen since early 2017, according to the report.
During the three-month period, 904 investments were made into fintech startups.
Dollars raised and deal count is also down compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, when 786 fintech startups raised $8.7 billion.
Wonderschool, a startup that provides software and support to help individuals and local governments spin up childcare businesses, has acquired EarlyDay, which operates an early childhood educator marketplace.
TechCrunch has covered Wonderschool since its infancy, including both of its seed rounds and its Series A (led by Andreessen Horowitz).
Back in early 2022, Wonderschool raised a $25 million Series B at a $165 million post-money valuation, according to Crunchbase data.
Indeed, a quick search for “childcare crisis” will show you just how worried parents of young kids are and how strapped they are for affordable options.
If the Wonderschool-EarlyDay deal works out, we could see an increase in the supply of childcare services.
Canva has typically targeted the beginner for their products, but company co-Founder Cliff Obrecht sees the acquisition opening the door to more advanced users.
“Canva needed products with more complex capabilities to go up against Adobe,” Wang told TechCrunch.
In a blog post on the Affinity website, CEO Ashley Hewson tried to allay customer fears about the change.
“In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels.
With Affinity, Canva gains 3 million users worldwide along with 90 employees who will be joining the company.
The negotiations between Fisker and a large automaker — reported to be Nissan — over a potential investment and collaboration have been terminated, a development that puts a separate near-term rescue funding effort in danger.
Fisker revealed in a Monday morning regulatory filing that the automaker terminated the negotiations on March 22.
Fisker said in the filing that it will ask the unnamed investor to waive the closing condition.
In February, Fisker laid of 15% of its staff (around 200 people) and last week reported having just $121 million in the bank.
Fisker had held talks with other automakers, including Mazda, but only Nissan recently remained at the table.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it’s launching a formal “phase 2” investigation into the planned merger between Vodafone and Three UK.
The CMA says that the deal could lead to higher prices for consumers, while also impact future infrastructure investments.
However, the CMA has given both parties a token five working days to address its concerns with “meaningful solutions” before it formally progresses the investigation.
Such a scenario is precisely why the U.K. introduced the National Security and Investment Act back in 2022, with previous form in blocking deals between U.K. entities and Chinese companies.
“This case has more moving parts than the CMA’s other recent big decisions, and is arguably more important for the U.K. economy,” Smith said.
The big cloud vendors have all already lined up with other chatbot partners: Microsoft with OpenAI, Google and Amazon with Anthropic; Cohere picking up assorted others like Oracle and Salesforce.
If and when Inflection ever perfected Pi on its enormous AI infrastructure, the race looked to be already lost.
Despite close ties with OpenAI, Microsoft also has many reasons to be needing a backup for it’s all-important AI gambit.
There are so many red flags with OpenAI that Microsoft is wise to wean its dependence.
Then again, just like Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, we wonder if regulators will also have something to say about this deal.
Don Lemon announced on Wednesday that X owner Elon Musk has canceled the deal for his upcoming talkshow on the platform.
Lemon, a former CNN anchor, says Musk terminated the partnership hours after he interviewed the multibillionaire for the first episode of the show.
“Elon Musk has canceled the partnership I had with X, which they announced as part of their public commitment to amplifying more diverse voices on their platform,” Lemon wrote in a statement.
“He informed me of his decision hours after an interview I conducted with him on Friday.”Despite the canceled deal with X, The Don Lemon Show will live on.
The interview with Musk will remain the premiere episode of the show and is scheduled to air on March 18 on YouTube, podcast channels and X.
The European Parliament voted Wednesday to adopt the AI Act, securing the bloc pole-position in setting rules for a broad sweep of artificial intelligence-powered software — or what regional lawmakers have dubbed “the world’s first comprehensive AI law”.
pic.twitter.com/t4ahAwkaSn — Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) March 13, 2024Once published in the EU’s Official Journal in the coming months, the AI Act will come into force 20 days after that.
And with that alone the AI Act has nudged the future of AI in a human-centric direction.
But the legislation also puts some (light touch) transparency obligations on a third subset of apps, including AI chatbots; generative AI tools that can create synthetic media (aka deepfakes); and general purpose AI models (GPAI).
Rules for GPAIs were a later addition to the AI Act, driven by concerned MEPs.
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This week in space historyI don’t mean to be impolite, but this week in space history we’re revisiting…URANUS.
That’s right: On March 13, 1781, a German-born, British astronomer named Sir William Herschel noticed a faint object through his telescope.
He initially thought it might be a comet, but later correctly identified it as our solar system’s seventh planet.
