Andy Jassy on shutting down Amazon Care while buying One Medical: $AMZN decided to wind down Care before the acquisition, because the business can’t scale well, can’t figure out the right business model and how much to charge for in-person care.
$ONEM
#CodeCon #code2022

3 hours into #code2022 the most mentioned tech company is TikTok. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer called for a ban on TikTok “in any democracy.” Amy Klobuchar talked about potential bills on TikTok as it became the gatekeeper. Scott Galloway called it an existential threat.

~some professional updates~

Covering M&A has been fun and inspired me to follow the intersection of tech & finance. In my next role Reuters I’ll focus on tech companies across life stages and the VC/PE ecosystem behind it.

Pls send food recs & coffee invites in the Bay Area!

Interesting to see chip foundries now represent a cash-flow generating investment opportunity for PEs resembling infrastructures, such as data centers and fiber. Intel CFO thinks this could be one of many such deals to come $INTL $BAM

Real-money gaming companies are on the hunt for consolidations as their businesses rebound from COVID: Inspired Entertainment $INSE has made an all-cash bid to buy slot machine maker PlayAGS $AGS, sources told Reuters. w/svea herbst Greg Roumeliotis

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Major gaming M&A moves: AppLovin offered to buy Unity, on condition that Unity drops the annouced ironSource deal.

It offers 55% of combined co & CEO seat to lure Unity to create a $30 bln giant. We're told the ironSource deal prompted AppLovin's move. $U
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Direct lenders continue to shine on take-private deals. As banks are set to lose millions on buyout loans for Citrix, 20 private lenders provided a $2.5 billion loan to Vista for the Avalara deal. Private lenders also lent to the $PING deal last week. reut.rs/3vKSONN

Just in #adtech M&A: Tremor International $TRMR is buying Amobee from Singtel for $239 million, sources told Reuters, a year after Singtel said it's reviewing the asset reuters.com/technology/sin…

This tweet👇prompted an investigation by Coinbase and then the SEC on insider trading in crypto reuters.com/technology/us-…

JUST IN Reuters Deals: Software firm New Relic $NEWR plans to hire advisors to explore options including a sale after receiving takeover interest, sources told me & Anirban Sen.

New Relic settled w/ Jana last month. A deal would mark another win for Jana after Zendesk.

Scoop: PE firm Centerbridge prepares a sale of cloud solutions provider AHEAD that could fetch $3 billion, 2 years after it acquired the firm for $1.3 billion. More financials 👇reut.rs/3ziLOtN
Busy time for IT services exits, as we also wrote about Presidio last week

The standard Musk has to meet to walk away is close to “Twitter is a huge fraud,” not “I disagree with their definition of spam accounts” reuters.com/technology/twi…

.Presidio's EBITDA is more than $350 million, we're told. Its business has been growing decently since taking private by BC Partners three years ago. Cloud projects have been a driver with a major partnership with AWS

What Zuckerberg is telling Meta employees as he warns recessions: “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals…is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn't for you, and that self-selection is OK with me” great reporting Katie Paul

Good timing for FTX.US head to plug FTX Stocks, its equity trading platform in beta, as FTX said there are 'no active M&A talks' with Robinhood.

Note last week FTX acquired Embed which will give it clearing & brokerage capabilities. $Hood down 4% after hours

Elon Musk wants to grow $TWTR users to 1 billion by offering entertainment, news & payment. His biggest concern is still on bots and layoff is def on the table.

Great reporting by Sheila Dang who even found out Musk's Zoom avatar. Hint: it's two numbers
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CVC's growth arm is working w/ advisors to explore a sale of software firm VelocityEHS, which offers environmental, health & safety compliance tools. Bought it for $328 million in 2017 (w/BOLT) and now seeking as much as $2 billion.
w/Emma-Victoria Farr

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Latest on the $TWTR saga from Greg Roumeliotis & me: Elon Musk is pausing talks to raise an additional $2-3 billion to finance the deal, while Twitter insists the deal is on track. Banks are also waiting for more clarity before launching the syndication.
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