Snap paid $114.5M to acquire Vurb and gives acquisition details for Bitstrips and Looksery
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Now that Snap is revealing its financial guts to the world in its filing for its initial public offering, we’re getting a small glimpse at how much the company is paying to acquire startups.
As Snap becomes a larger company and is able to amass more of a cash pile, it’ll be able to start picking off startups that can either fill out the company’s ranks with talent or add products that will help make its core app even more sticky. Snap’s IPO itself is actually a fundraising event (in addition to getting shareholders some liquidity), which will give the company more cash in order to hunt down these acquisitions.
We’ve reported on a lot of acquisitions the company has made over the last year, but Snap laid out some of the specifics in its public filing today:
- Snap acquired Looksery in August, which at the time was reported to be for around $150 million. The filing basically confirms this price. Snap acquired the company as part of its push to create animated lenses — another product that would help further increase engagement and stickiness for the app, which is what the company is pitching to advertisers as its core value. The Looksery acquisition was $79.4 million, with $71.2 million in retention bonuses.
- Snap also acquired Bitstrips, the creators of Bitmoji personal avatars, in March last year. Snap paid $64.2 million for the company, which it looks like didn’t include any retention bonuses.
- Snap acquired a “mobile search company” in August for $114.5 million — this is Vurb, a mobile search engine that pulls info from partnered apps.
- Snap also says it acquired a “research and development-driven computer vision software company” in 2016 for around $47 million — this may be Seene, a startup that let mobile users create 3D selfies.
- Beyond those acquisitions, Snap also said it was providing an additional $255.2 million in cash and stock as retention bonuses.
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