> one of the biggest waste of money on an acquisition.

I think that was when intel acquired McAfee for 8B in 2010.

MSFT buying Nokia for $7B is runner up. But at least it could have worked if MSFT hadn't burned it down. Intel and McAfee makes no sense at all.

We don’t know how OpenAI is paying. A lot of comments seem to be assuming this is an all-cash deal. We have no evidence for that.

These deals are mostly in stock, not cash. $3b cash is not something most companies can afford to part with, and additionally, making deals that are stock-heavy creates an incentive for the leadership of the acquired company to keep working towards the general interest of OAI, and not instantly retire.

> These deals are mostly in stock, not cash

How are you defining “these deals”? Most acquisitions of startup by larger companies in America over the last decade, at least, have been all cash.

I'd define them as a large company acquiring a private startup. Slack >> Salesforce was a cash-and-stock deal. Postmaters >> Uber, all stock.

In cases where the company being acquired is already publicly traded, those deals would have to be all cash as their shareholders would need to be bought out. IBM paid cash for Hashicorp, and Doordash will acquire Deliveroo in cash.

> I'd define them as a large company acquiring a private startup. Slack >> Salesforce was a cash-and-stock deal. Postmaters >> Uber, all stock

Okay, in that category of M&A in practically any category, the vast majority of deals are all cash. Deferred, for executives, in most cases. But cash.

> In cases where the company being acquired is already publicly traded, those deals would have to be all cash as their shareholders would need to be bought out

Not true. Preferable. Easier. Not not a requirement.

instinctively I agree but it's all about timing: if they try to build their own IDE and hired people it would probably still take a couple of years to get a decent product. I don't know about patents.

> if they try to build their own IDE and hired people

Oh, haven't you heard? Hiring people to write software is so last decade. Maybe they just didn't want to vibe code a Windsurf implementation and decided to buy a press cycle for $3B

you mean the company that spent $9B to make $4B in 2024? that openai?

i agree with you on this - it seems that openai hallucinates reality as much as their products do :-/

> If OpenAI can't build an official IDE for less than 3 Billion

It's funny money / made-up value. This is not $3B cash.