MariaDB is the subject of another potential takeover bid, as the company behind the eponymous open source relational database management system (RDBMS) confirmed it had received a provisional offer from California-based K1 Investment Management.
In the months that followed, MariaDB received its first “unsolicited non-binding indicative proposal,” this time from existing investor Runa Capital which tentatively offered $0.56 per share in cash.
Three weeks later, Runa stated that it wouldn’t be acquiring MariaDB after all, but instead an associate company called RP Ventures would be providing a $26.5 million loan.
This news led MariaDB’s stock to more than double in a couple of days, which is why K1 is making its bid relative to MariaDB’s closing price before any forbearance agreement was announced.
So in many ways, K1 is perhaps better suited to take over MariaDB than Runa was, even if it ultimately decides against it.
When HPE announced its intention to acquire Juniper Networks for $14 billion in cold, hard cash earlier this month, it was a bit of a shock.
In fact, in a blog post announcing the deal, Juniper CEO Rami Rahim suggested it was more about AI.
“This combination with HPE is expected to enable us to deliver more comprehensive, more competitive, truly end-to-end experience-first AI-native solutions,” he wrote.
Assuming regulators don’t object — not exactly a given these days — this deal could close later this year or early next.
Since the deal was announced on January 12, HPE investors seem lukewarm about it; that is, if the stock price is any indication of their sentiment.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching a formal probe into the proposed merger between Vodafone and Three UK.
That is some 18 months form when they first revealed their plans back in June.
It’s not entirely clear how that might impact this latest merger attempt, but Smith reckons that deal is as good as dead, regardless of what any court might subsequently find.
“The previous Three/O2 merger is still technically going through the EU courts, but that deal is long since dead in reality,” Smith said.
“We strongly believe that the proposed merger of Vodafone and Three will significantly enhance competition by creating a combined business with more resources to invest in infrastructure to better compete with the two larger converged players,” Vodafone UK CEO Ahmed Essam said in a statement.
The proceeds bring Clerk’s total raised to $55.5 million, and co-founder and CEO Colin Sidoti says that they’ll be put toward expanding Clerk’s service beyond authentication and into authorization — i.e.
Clerk builds developer tools for authentication, offering drop-in components coded in React, the open source frontend JavaScript library.
“Despite authentication and authorization being ubiquitous challenges across every software company, they have been exceptionally slow to become outsourced,” Colin said.
“When you ask developers why, they often highlight that authentication and authorization are too tightly-coupled to the rest of their application to outsource.
The integration is motivated in part by the investment from Stripe, which Colin says marks the beginning of a “strategic partnership” between the two firms.
The deal’s latest hurdle is the European Commission, which has set a February 14 deadline to reach a final decision.
According to a new report, the EU regulatory body is set to vote against acquisition, citing the perceived anti-competitive nature of deal.
In July, Amazon announced that it was lowering its asking price from $61 to $51.75 per share.
The day the initial deal was announced, iRobot cut its headcount by 10% — around 140 people – as part of a restructure.
As of this writing, share prices have dipped below $20 – one-third of where things where when the deal was announced.
The deal would allow General Catalyst to tap deeper into India’s vibrant technology scene that has lured over $100 billion in startup investments since 2010.
The deal hasn’t finalized, so things may change, the sources cautioned, requesting anonymity as the deliberation is private.
The U.S. firm held conversations with many senior individuals in India last year looking to find an India-based partner, many people familiar with the matter said.
Its new focus on India follows the firm expanding in Europe last year by agreeing to merge with La Famiglia, an investor in several high-profile early-stage startups including AI firm Mistral.
Investing in India has proven uniquely challenging to many global venture firms that have entered the country or have explored such possibility, a partner at a India-based venture firm said.
A year ago, at CES, I broke out the snark-hammer at 444, a startup that was trying to make a ‘smart’ pepper spray device.
To my surprise, it had landed a significant partnership, co-development, and co-branding deal with Mace, one of the biggest names in the sprayable self-defense sector.
“When you deploy the device, pepper spray comes out.
I often end up seeing startups at CES that seem completely pointless (this year, my eyes did backflips over Direction 9.
This serves as a great great reminder that, for true entrepreneurs, it takes more than a snarky post from an opinionated blogger to encourage them to throw in the towel.
SentinelOne’s deal to acquire PingSafe valued the Peak XV-backed young startup at over $100 million, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in one of the strongest and fastest deals emerging from India.
The New York Stock Exchange-listed AI security firm disclosed the cash and equity deal last week, but didn’t reveal the financial terms.
Founded in 2021, PingSafe is a relatively new and small security company with <100 employees and ~50+ customers, mostly in India.
The British bank also estimated the size of the deal to be about $100 million.
PingSafe is “among the fastest ‘seed to significant exits’ Indian ecosystem has ever seen,” Rajan Anandan, who leads Surge at Peak XV, tweeted last week.
The investors surveyed clearly aren’t the only ones who are excited about a potential Stripe exit in 2024, either.
According to secondary data tracker Caplight, there has been an absolute flurry of buyers looking to get shares in the company in recent months.
On Tuesday, literally the day after New Year’s Day, a secondary sale closed that valued Stripe shares at $21.06 apiece; that values the startup at $53.65 billion, according to Caplight data.
There are a few reasons why this deal is worth paying attention to.
For one, Stripe’s $53 billion value marks an increase from the company’s most recent primary round last March, when Stripe was valued at $50 billion.
Aurora and automotive supplier Continental have wrapped up the first phase of a more than $300 million project to mass produce autonomous vehicle hardware for commercial self-driving trucks.
The two companies said Friday that the design and system architecture of an autonomous vehicle hardware kit is now complete.
Importantly, the hardware system has to be reliable, easy to maintain and produced cheaply.
Initially, these driverless trucks will carry freight between Dallas and Houston, a route the company has been using for testing.
While these first 19 driverless trucks won’t be equipped with the Aurora-Continental hardware kit, they are designed to automotive standards and to operate safely without a driver, according to Aurora spokesperson Rachel Chibidakis.
