Technology
When a large company is after a popular startup, the decision to sell is not clear-cut
Last month, rumors first emerged that Google was pursuing cloud security startup Wiz, and a suggestion of $23 billion was on the table, the most lucrative offer ever made to a startup. There were a lot of moving parts before the deal finally fell through, and it’s fair to ask: What are the mechanics behind putting a big deal like this in motion, and the way does a startup determine whether to sell or not?
We spoke with Jyoti Bansal, founder and CEO of Harness, a developer tools startup that has raised about $575 million and made a variety of small acquisitions along the way. While Bansal has no direct knowledge of the Google-Wiz negotiation process, he experienced the adulation of a large company when Cisco got here in after his previous startup, AppDynamics. Cisco ultimately bought the company just days before it went public in 2017 for $3.7 billion.
He says there are three aspects at play in deals like this. The first is how serious the offer is, and whether it’s concrete or simply exploratory. In the case of a private company like Wiz, it’s likely to be exploratory at first, since there’s not as much public details about its funds as there can be with a public company.
Bansal says that when he was going through the AppDynamics negotiations with Cisco, he had recently filed his S-1 with the SEC, and all of his financial cards were already on the table. “So for an acquirer, acquiring a private company that’s on the IPO track and a few days away from an IPO is fundamentally no different than acquiring a public company,” he says. “All the information they need is there, and they don’t have to worry about whether they’re missing something, or whether the information isn’t clean, verified, or audited.”
Once you’ve got determined how serious the company is, you wish to investigate whether it’s a good fit. “The second factor in any type of courtship that happens is why are you merging companies? Is it interesting? Is it exciting?” You also need to consider what is going to occur to your employees and your products: Will some employees lose their jobs? Will products be discontinued or canceled?
Finally, and maybe most significantly, the economics of the deal need to be examined to see if it is sensible and represents good value for shareholders. From Wiz’s perspective, this was a huge offer (assuming the rumored amount was accurate) that was 46 times current ARR and 23 times projected 2025 ARR. However, Wiz believed it could be higher to remain a private company.
In Bansal’s case, when Cisco courted him, he was in the middle of his company’s IPO tour. It took a few days for the company to go public, but even with the information Cisco could analyze, there have been ongoing discussions, and it wasn’t easy for Bansal to surrender his baby, even when the price was right in the end.
Both firms knew they’d a strict deadline. Once the IPO happened, it was over. The negotiations ended with three offers, and after they ended, Cisco got the company. “Ultimately, it comes down to what’s best for all the shareholders in terms of risk and reward. It’s about what’s the risk of being independent versus the reward of selling,” Bansal said.
The first offer was according to the IPO value and was easy to reject. The second was higher, but after discussing it with the board, Bansal again said no. “Then they came back with a third offer, and in the third offer it made sense, from a risk-reward perspective, for our shareholders to sell the company.” And they sold at a range of two.5 to 3 times the IPO valuation.
It’s easy to think that with billions of dollars at stake, the decision to sell can be easy, however it really wasn’t. “It wasn’t an easy decision on our part. It sounds like ($3.7 billion) is a very easy decision.” But he says you’ve to survey your investors, your fellow executives, your board members — they usually all have different interests, and also you’re trying to make the right decision for everybody involved.
Wiz thought it was higher to stay independent. In AppDynamics’ case, with the pressure of an IPO looming and a good deal on the table, the company eventually decided to accomplish that. “So for us to independently get to a valuation of two and a half, three times our IPO valuation, we would need at least three years of good execution,” he said. “And there were a lot of unknowns, a lot of risks for the company, like what’s going to happen in the next three years.”
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t regret it, regardless that he remodeled 300 of his employees millionaires with the deal and his personal wealth. When he looks back on the moment of the announcement, he realizes that it’s entirely possible he could have made that much money, or much more.
“I always wonder what AppDynamics could have become if we had gone to IPO. There are a lot of unknowns, and hindsight is 20/20, but if you look back, we sold the company in 2017, and the years after that sale, post-2017, were some of the best boom years in tech, especially for B2B SaaS,” he said. He ultimately could have made more cash, but he began Harness as a substitute and is joyful constructing a second company.
It’s necessary to note that Wiz’s offer stays mired in rumors, so it might or may not be that big. But if it were, the founders may also regret not getting Wiz the value it could have had if it had taken the big money and run.
Technology
Apple faces a $3.8 billion U.K. damages claim over its “iCloud monopoly.”
British consumer rights group ‘Which?’ files an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on behalf of roughly 40 million users of its iCloud cloud storage service.
The class motion lawsuitwhich is searching for £3 billion in damages (about $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), claims Apple broke competition rules by giving preferential treatment to its own cloud storage service and effectively forcing people to pay for iCloud after a “fraud ” prices.
“iOS has a monopoly and control over Apple’s operating systems, and it’s Apple’s responsibility not to make use of this dominance to realize an unfair advantage in related markets, resembling the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what happened,” the corporate wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).
The lawsuit alleges that Apple encourages users of its devices to join iCloud for photo storage and other data storage purposes, while making it difficult for consumers to make use of alternative storage providers – including by stopping them from storing or creating all of their data. Back up your phone data to a third-party provider.
“iOS users will have to pay for the service when photos, notes, messages and other data exceed the free 5GB limit,” he noted.
The lawsuit also accuses Apple of overcharging British consumers for iCloud subscriptions as a consequence of a lack of competition. “Apple has increased the price of iCloud for UK consumers by 20% to 29% across all storage tiers in 2023.” – it said, adding that it was searching for compensation from all affected Apple customers and estimating that individual consumers could owe a mean of £70 (about $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.
An analogous lawsuit – arguing that Apple has unlawfully monopolized the cloud storage market – has been filed within the US in Marchand stays pending after the corporate didn’t throw it.
UK consumers agreed
A UK claim is made on an opt-out basis for UK based consumers who qualify for inclusion. Consumers who live outside the UK and consider they’re eligible must actively conform to participate.
Spokesman Tommy Handley told us that eligible Apple customers include “anyone who ‘acquired’ iCloud services, including non-paying users, within nine years of the Consumer Rights Act coming into force on October 1, 2015.”
Handley also confirmed that the £3 billion compensation figure takes under consideration potential cancellations, duplicates and mortality.
It is a not-for-profit organization, however the litigation is being funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), a major global litigation financier, which it says is committed to bringing the case to fruition.
At the identical time, it calls on Apple to settle the claim without having to go to court – offering refunds to consumers and making iOS available to offer users with a “real choice” of cloud services.
Commenting in a statement, Which chief executive Anabel Hoult said: “By making this claim, Which? shows large corporations like Apple that they can’t cheat British consumers without facing consequences. Taking this legal motion means we may help consumers get the redress they deserve, discourage similar behavior in the long run and create a higher, more competitive market.”
Assuming Apple doesn’t seek an out-of-court settlement, the subsequent stage of the dispute will rely on whether the CAT grants Which permission to act as a collective representative of consumers and allows the claim to be heard on a collective basis.
In recent years, there was a rise within the number of sophistication motion lawsuits against Big Tech following a wave of antitrust enforcement on either side of the Atlantic that continues to yield incomplete results and business impact.
In the UK, Apple was also the goal of a class motion lawsuit brought last 12 months on behalf of developers over App Store fees.
Also last 12 months, a separate lawsuit within the UK was filed against Apple and Amazon, accusing them of price collusion.
Technology
Lyten buys battery production assets from beleaguered Northvolt
Silicon Valley battery startup Lyten announced today that it’s acquiring manufacturing assets from Northvolt, a cash-strapped Swedish battery maker.
As a part of the deal, Northvolt is selling manufacturing equipment the corporate inherited through its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, one other battery startup. Lyten may also take over the lease of the old Cuberg manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California. Lyten will invest $20 million next yr to expand its San Leandro facilities and existing operations in San Jose.
Neither Lyten nor Northvolt immediately responded to questions on the financial terms of the deal.
Unlike many other battery manufacturers, Lyten doesn’t use nickel, cobalt, manganese and even iron in its cathode materials. Instead, it uses low cost and abundant sulfur mixed with a graphene matrix. The anode side doesn’t use graphite, a surface-facing material export restrictions from China. The company claims that this mix creates cells which have the next energy density than nickel-manganese-cobalt cells, but are cheaper to provide than inexpensive lithium iron phosphate.
Northvolt has been having problems currently. The company struggled to ramp up production of lithium-ion batteries and failed to satisfy a big order from BMW, prompting the automaker to cancel a €2 billion contract.
To get monetary savings, the corporate announced in August that it could achieve this snapshot research and development on the Cuberg plant, shedding almost 200 employees. Then in September it said it was shedding a further 1,600 staff, or about 20% of its workforce, and that it had halted two planned factory expansions.
It is unclear whether cost cutting and the Lyten deal can be enough to assist Northvolt survive the approaching yr. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Northvolt needs to lift almost $1 billion to present itself some respiration room; According to reports, the corporate’s operations generate costs of roughly $100 million monthly.
While Northvolt is slipping, Lyten appears to be growing.
The San Jose-based startup plans to begin constructing a factory in Nevada next yr with a planned capability of 10 gigawatt hours. Once accomplished, the $1 billion facility will produce lithium-sulfur batteries for micro-mobility vehicles reminiscent of scooters and electric bicycles, and for defense and space applications reminiscent of drones and satellites. The company expects to come back online in 2027.
Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt’s Cuberg assets gives it equipment and space to provide as much as 200 megawatt-hours of lithium-sulfur batteries within the Bay Area. This should provide the corporate with some revenue while it prepares a bigger factory in Nevada.
According to PitchBook, Lyten has raised $476 million up to now at a $1.17 billion valuation, which incorporates a $200 million round that closed last yr.
Technology
Klarna is kicking off its US IPO plans with a confidential filing with the SEC
Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) start-up. Klarna is on its method to becoming a public company. Fintech he said on Wednesday announced the confidential filing of a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The announcement of the stock exchange listing, long in the making, comes amid a dearth of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the technology sector. Klarna’s European status only adds to the excitement of today’s news.
Founded in 2005, Klarna is certainly one of several players on the market BNPL a space enabling customers to buy goods with a guarantee of an interest-free loan. After launching in the US in 2015, Klarna achieved a lofty valuation of over $45 billion by 2021, a figure that quickly declined by 85% to $6.5 billion attributable to “market corrections.”
However, Klarna’s valuation recently increased to $14.6 billionbased on reports, after one investor increased his stake.
We still don’t know the way many shares will likely be offered or what the IPO price range will likely be, but today’s announcement paves the way for Klarna to go public, likely in the first half of 2025.
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