$14.3 Billion seems excessive for it to be a pure aquihire play. There's undoubtedly some IP acquisition (or at least exclusive access to certain IP) involved.

Their fantasy money from ScaleAI’s inflated valuation will easily balance this out on the books.

I know "excessive" is technically correct, but at the same time it seems an understatement.

It's about 0.85% of Meta's market cap - less than the 1% they paid for (granted, all of) Instagram. They also paid about 1% of market cap for Oculus ($2b into a ~$220b market cap)

Seems about par for Facebook when it comes to company-shifting acquisitions.

Little known secret is they paid $2.7B, not $2B. And Zuck and the FB head of M&A were talking shit about John Carmack’s crazy wife, who was doing his negotiation for him. On WhatsApp no less.

That sounds about right. Thanks for the insight.

> the weird setup where they only buy non voting shares is to not trigger any regulatory review

Do regulators actually fall for these sort of things in the US? One would expect companies to be judged based on following the spirit of the law, rather than nitpicking and allowing wide holes like this.

>One would expect companies to be judged based on following the spirit of the law, rather than nitpicking and allowing wide holes like this.

The letter of the law is what people follow. The spirit, or intent, of the law is what they argue about in court cases.

If the regulation says 49% and a company follows it, who's to say they're exploiting a loophole? They're literally following the law. Until there is a court case and precedent is set.

The Clayton act explicitly includes partial acquisition as still being covered. "No person engaged in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock... [where] the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly."

There may be some other regulations that are avoided by a partial acquisition, but it doesn't bring it wholly outside of the relevant antitrust laws.

> who's to say they're exploiting a loophole?

I guess "intent" is what matters really. If the intent is to avoid regulatory review and you could prove that intent, then they're trying to exploit it. That in itself should probably trigger a review regardless. If they've arrived at 49% for some other reason(s) than just to avoid regulatory review, then fair enough.

Correct. That's what courts are for, like I said.

Laws are comprised primarily of letters.

Spiritual laws is how you get b b kangaroo courts