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, Facebook made two big purchases and PDFTron Systems Inc. acquired ActivePDF.
Facebook acquired Swedish start-up Mapillary
Facebook, Inc. announced its acquisition of Swedish mapping start-up Mapillary. Although financial terms were not disclosed, Mapillary has raised $24.5 million from investors over the last seven years.
Founded in Malmo, Sweden in 2013, Mapillary is a Google Street View competitor. The company captures street-level imagery to map communities, businesses, and cities via crowdsourced imagery databases.
Other tech giants such as Apple and Google have invested heavily in street-level mapping over the last decade, while Facebook has been mostly absent in the category. Currently the social media giant’s Facebook Marketplace relies largely on map data.
With this acquisition, Mapillary’s team and projects will become part of Facebook’s broader open mapping efforts, as the company takes on Apple and Google at mapping at the ground level.
Facebook makes another purchase: Ready at Dawn Studios
Facebook, Inc. announced that it has acquired Ready at Dawn Studios, as the company continues to add VR technology and developments to its Oculus studios.
Ready at Dawn is a veteran game developer founded by former Blizzard Entertainment and Naughty Dog developers in 2003. The studio built its reputation by developing prominent Sony franchises such as Dexter and God of War, and recently The Order: 1886 and Lone Echo for Oculus.
Ready at Dawn will now operate under the Oculus Studios banner but remain an independent developer.
This marks the third VR related acquisition by Facebook in the past year, the company acquired Beat Games in November, and Sanzaru Games in February.
PDFTron Systems Inc. strengthens its position with ActivePDF
PDFTron Systems Inc., a document processing technology company, announced the acquisition of ActivePDF, a provider of server-side PDF automation tools and digital transformation solutions to 40% of Fortune 500 companies.
This deal marks the second acquisition PDFTron made since the company received a $71 million growth investment led by Silversmith Capital Partners in May 2019. Just three months ago, the company acquired another document technology company, BCL Technologies.
Since ActivePDF’s inception in 2000, it has managed 30,000 PDF, application programme interface and paperless automation deployments. Its products are widely used by customers across different sectors, such as DocuSign, the US Department of Defense, Nationwide Insurance and Barclays.
Adding ActivePDF will strengthen PDFTron’s leading position in the document technology sector while creating cost synergies and driving the digital transformation of tools and services in documents.
In Other News
What else is happening? Here are pending deals and developments from this week:
- Mastercard has agreed to acquire fintech company Finicity in a $825 million buyout.
- Microsoft has entered into an agreement to acquire software company CyberX in a deal valued around $165 million.
- L’Oreal has announced it is acquiring skincare brand Thayers Natural Remedies.
- Aldo Group, a Candadian retailer that owns and operates a worldwide chain of footwear and accessories stores, could receive a bailout from the Quebec government.
- Dell is considering selling part of its VMware stake, worth approximately $50 billion — news of which sent both companies stocks soaring.
- CEC Entertainment Inc., the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza which has been covertly operating under the name Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings during the COVID-19 pandemic, has filed for bankruptcy.
