Elon Musk is trending online after his acquisition of social media platform Twitter. The world’s richest man bought the social media app for a total of $44 billion (Sh5.1 trillion) after placing a bid that saw him buy each share for $54.20.
He acquired Twitter from a number of shareholders, among them the co-founder, former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Twitter’s acquisition is one of the highest, ranking third after Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard at $68.7 billion and Dell’s purchase of EMC for $67 billion.
Below are some of the most notable tech acquisitions over the years.
Read: Elon Musk Launches Hostile Twitter Takeover, Offers to Buy Company for Sh4.9 Trillion
Facebook acquired WhatsApp in February 2014 from its founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum. The two who were former employees of Yahoo had attached a purchase price of $16 billion- $4 billion in cash and $12 billion remaining in Facebook shares.
Facebook however paid a total of 19.6 billion(Sh2.2 trillion) after adding $3.6 billion to the original price as compensation to WhatsApp employees for staying on board at Facebook.
WhatsApp remains one of Facebook’s most valuable purchase to date. The app became the most popular messaging service in 2015 and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020
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Microsoft purchased business-focused platform LinkedIn in 2016 from Reid Hoffman and other founding team members from Paypal. In what is considered one of Microsoft’s biggest purchase, the tech giant paid $26.2 billion (Sh3 trillion) in cash for a deal of $196 per LinkedIn share.
As of 2020, LinkedIn recorded 690 million annual users raking in $8 billion in annual revenue.
Skype
Before LinkedIn, Microsoft made another huge purchase in 2011. The company acquired VoIP company Skype for $8.56 billion (Sh 984 billion) in cash.
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This was the second time Skype had been bought out after it was started out in 2003. The company in 2005 been purchased by eBay for $3.1 billion. EBay then sold the majority of its stake in 2009 to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it paid, before Microsoft came knocking.
In September 2017, Microsoft notified Skype’s business department that it will be replaced by Teams and its consumer version of Skype. Microsoft said that it will keep investing in Skype. However, the company finally phased off Skype in June 2021.
Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion (Sh115 billion), a combination of cash and company shares.
The photo and video sharing company was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Systrom stayed on as CEO until 2018. As of 2020, Instagram was raking a annual revenue of $24 billion with 1.3 billion users.
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