In keeping with our mission to provide comprehensive advertising analysis, MediaRadar puts together a report of the most important mergers and acquisitions news each week. Stay in the loop, whether you sell advertising space or focus on business development.
This week, Infosys acquired Blue Acorn iCi, Apple gained Vilynx, and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced plans to buy Xilinx.
Infosys gains customer experience provider Blue Acorn
IT services giant Infosys struck a deal with Beringer Capital to acquire Blue Acorn iCi for up to $125 million.
Blue Acorn, a digital customer experience, commerce and analytics service provider, was one of the first companies to specialize in both Adobe Experience Manager and Magento Commerce, and earned recognition both as Adobe Emerging Solution Partner of the Year and Salesforce Commerce Partner of the Year.
Beringer Capital acquired Blue Acorn in 2017 after Blue Acorn made a list of Fastest Growing Companies for the fourth straight year. The acquisition builds upon Infosys’ end-to-end customer experience offerings.
The deal also pairs well with Infosys’ $75 million buyout of the digital marketing and consumer insights firm Wongdoody in 2018. The acquisition is being undertaken by Infosys Nova Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys.
Apple acquired self-learning AI video startup Vilynx
Sometime between July 16 and this week, Apple acquired Barcelona start-up Vilynx for around $50 million. The exact date and price hasn’t been made public, and Apple only offered its standard line that the company “buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
With that said (or unsaid), it’s clear that Vilynx’s artificial intelligence and machine learning vision technology will boost apple products, including iPones, and improve their AI across apps and services like Siri.
Apple will retain the Vilynx office and team of AI engineers and researchers in Barcelona. Vilynx joins the growing list of AI companies Apple has bought this year, which also includes Voysis, Inductiv, and Xnor.ai.
AMD announces plans to buy computing products rival Xilinx
After a couple of weeks of rumors, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced that it is acquiring rival Xilinx in an all-stock transaction valued at $35 billion.
Santa Clara, CA-based AMD specializes in CPU and graphics chips. The company has seen strong growth this year thanks to the surge in the sale of laptops, gaming computers, and gaming consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation.
With the strong growth in businesses, AMD’s share increased roughly 80% this year, which gave it the financial power to make big acquisitions. The combination of the two companies would create the industry’s largest high-performance computing products company with a total of 13,000 engineers and expand their addressable market to $110 billion.
Along with NVIDIA’s $40 Billion acquisition of Arm Holdings, and Analog Devices’ $21 billion acquisition of Maxim Integrated earlier this year, this deal further accelerates the transformation and consolidation of the semiconductor industry.
In Other News
Here are other noteworthy deals coming up soon:
- Spin Master, a Canadian global toy and entertainment company has announced an agreement to acquire London-based Rubik’s Brand, owner of the Rubik’s Cube.
- Spirits giant Diageo has announced it has reached an agreement to buy out family-owned Chase Distillery for an undisclosed amount.
- B&G Foods announced that it is buying the Crisco brand from J.M. Smucker Co. for $550 million.
- According to the Wall Street Journal, semiconductor company Marvell Technology Group Ltd. is nearing a deal to buy Inphi Corp. in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $10 billion.
- Electronic e-commerce company Newegg Inc. is going public in a reverse merger deal with Lianluo Smart Limited
- The Wall Street Journal reported that Dunkin’ and Baskin Robbins parent, Dunkin’ Brands Group, Inc., is in talks to go private in an acquisition deal with Inspire Brands Inc.
- Bottling company Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd. (CCA) confirms that it has received a takeover proposal valued at $6.6 billion from U.K.-based bottling company Coca-Cola European Partners.
- Nearly two months after announcing the termination of the biggest luxury goods deal in history and almost taking the case to court, the two luxury giants LVMH and Tiffany have finally sorted things out and agreed to a deal at a lowered price.
