Citrix to be acquired by Vista and Evergreen/Elliott in a $16.5B all-cash deal, will be merged with Tibco to create SaaS powerhouse

TechCrunch Newsletter

Monday, January 31, 2022 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, January 31! We're putting a bow on the first month of the year today, but that doesn't mean we're looking back. Not at all. First, news is popping off like firecrackers. And, we're looking ahead because we're doing a lot of really fun live podcasting this year. See you there! – Alex Image Credits: Blue Planet Studio / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 4 Sony buys Bungie as gaming consolidates: If you have been reading TechCrunch for more than a few days, you've seen us cover the Take Two-Zynga deal, and the recent Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal. Today, Sony threw another transaction into the mix, announcing that it will buy Halo-maker Bungie for billions. There have been other transactions lately as well, and if the latest agreements make it past antitrust authorities, we'll head into next year with a more consolidated gaming industry than ever. It's not yet clear if that will prove a power up or a debuff for gamers. The now-infamous Bolt CEO is out: Following waves of power-posting Twitter threads attacking some of the more prominent power nexuses in tech, Ryan Breslow is out as the CEO of Bolt. Bolt competes in the one-click checkout space. Regardless of how you view the Breslow drama, he holds super-voting shares in Bolt, per TechCrunch reporting, so he's not going anywhere too far, we reckon. Spotify tries to patch the Joe Rogan flap: After some prominent musicians decided that they didn't want to have their material available on Spotify, protesting the music platform's deal with controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, the company began to work to beat back criticism. It detailed its guidelines, and said it would make some changes to its podcast setup. The market works! Sadly, not all capitalists are able to not lose their mind when it does, in fact, work. Citrix to go private in PE megadeal: With tech stocks under the hammer thanks to changing public market preferences and tightening central bank policies, it may be deal shopping season for private equity. Today, Vista and a friend decided to buy remote-desktop company Citrix for north of $16 billion. The idea is to turn Citrix and the already-private Tibco into a sort of enterprise stew. Will that work?

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Startups/VC Let's start today in France. The French startup scene had a pretty darn good 2021, meaning that more deals from the country are hitting our radar. Today it's Pennylane, which just raised $57 million in a Series B to "replace legacy accounting solutions in France," and its continent at large. If you aren't following our own Romain Dillet on the France beat, you're missing out. Scooting along, the trend of Big Funds Investing Earlier is not letting up, it appears. TCV has a new $460 million fund ready to go as early as Series A, despite the fact that it raised a multi-billion fund not many quarters ago. Our take is that this will help keep early-stage startup deals expensive. Spinning the globe, let's talk about Africa. There's a new fund with $200 million in the market looking for growth-stage startups on the continent. And, Tiger made its second investment into an African company, we wrote today, this time putting capital into Bamboo, a fintech startup that is bringing U.S. equities to the Nigerian market. Employees pass on Better.com CEO's return: If you return to lead your old team and they decide 'naw,' are you still a leader? TechCrunch reports that Better.com's staff are hitting the 'hell no' button and opting out of working there after the company brought back its disgraced CEO. Jupyter the platform: If you mess about with data, there's a good chance you are familiar with Jupyter Notebook. It's a scratchpad for data scientists to take notes, interact with code, and more. Deepnote wants to build a "data science platform on top of Jupyter-compatible notebooks," TechCrunch reports. The company just raised $20 million. GitHub for hardware? Startup AllSpice is not a spice, nor is it a guerrilla Old Spice marketing campaign. Instead, the company is creating a "collaborative hub designed for hardware development," TechCrunch reports. Probably every industry needs a GitHub-style central knowledge repository? Expect to see more startups working along similar lines. Qlub wants to shake up how you pay for food: Per Mike Butcher, Qlub is akin to Sunday in that it wants to help consumers pay for their orders via QR codes instead of restaurant staff helping them check out. The company just raised $17 million.

3 experiments for early-stage founders seeking product-market fit Elise King, program director of Human Ventures' entrepreneur-in-residence program, interviewed three founders from the company’s portfolio to learn more about the tactics they used to acquire data in their pursuit of product-market fit. Pre-MVP/customer discovery phase: Tiny Organics Mid-MVP phase: Tabu After product is in-market: Teal “The overarching theme seems to be this: Listen to your demographic, learn from their experiences in order to find a way to truly service them, and don't be afraid to pivot if needed,” advises King. Read More Image Credits: RichVintage / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Pinterest now lets you see pinned furniture IRL: The idea of wanting to see furniture in situ before buying is a good one. Some retailers have tools to help consumers do just that. Pinterest is getting in on the action, working with some of those same retailers. This fits into the general concept of Pinterest as more of an e-commerce company over time than a social network.

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Google will offer G Suite legacy edition users a 'no-cost option'

TechCrunch Newsletter

Friday, January 28, 2022 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 28, 2022! It's nearly blizzard o'clock where I am, so please enjoy the following newsletter as my final missive before hunkering down. In happier and better news, TechCrunch Early Stage is coming up in just a few months and not only am I hype about it, I'll hopefully be there IRL. See you soon! – Alex Image Credits: S3studio / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 Google invests up to $1B in Airtel: With a $700 million investment and $300 million in "multi-year commercial agreements" with Airtel, and Indian telco, Google has made its second major bet on Indian infra. Recall that Google also put money into Jio, another Indian telco. The deal underscores the importance of the country in the future of technology revenues. What's ahead for Europe: On the heels of news that European startups had an outsized 2021 when it came to fundraising, TechCrunch explored what's ahead for the continent. Some expect a slowdown from peak activity, while others anticipate further acceleration. Regardless of which perspective you favor, European venture investment is expected to remain elevated for some time to come. Zapp raises $200M: And speaking of European startups, Zapp, the U.K.-based quick-convenience delivery startup, just raised a massive Series B. The company previously raised $100 million, meaning that this round was big in absolute and comparative terms. As we see some consolidation in the fast-delivery space, this deal caught our eye.

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Startups/VC Are charter cities the future for African tech growth? TechCrunch's Tage Kene-Okafor has a great piece up on the site noting that "African cities have the fastest global urban growth rate," which is leading to overcrowding. Some folks think that "charter cities offer a solution." Special economic zones of all types have been tried before – will they offer African tech a faster route forward? Personalized learning is hot: Our in-house edtech expert Natasah Mascarenhas has a great piece out today on personalized learning startups – Learnfully, Wayfinder, Empowerly, and others – that are taking the lessons of remote schooling to heart and working to make products that work better for our kids. It's an encouraging, fascinating story. Rise wants to remake team calendaring: There is no shortage of apps in the market to help individuals and teams work together. But we might not need as many as we have. That's why Rise is making me think. The team calendaring app just raised a few million, and could replace a few tools that myself and friends use. I wonder if the solution to the Tool Overload of 2022 is tools that do less, intentionally. Canvas wants non-tech folks to be able to squeeze answers from data: Developers are in short supply, so no-code tools that allow folks who don't sling code to do their own building are blowing up. Similarly, a general dearth of data science talent in the market is creating space for tools like Canvas, which "is going all in with a spreadsheet-like interface for non-technical teams to access the information they need without bothering data teams," TechCrunch reports. Zigbang buys Samsung IoT business: The IoT promises of yesteryear are coming true, and not. Samsara recently went public on the back of its IoT business. That was a win for the category. That Zigbang, a South Korean proptech startup, is buying Samsung's IoT unit feels slightly less bullish. Series F-tw? Once upon a time I would have mocked a Series F as indication that the company in question had failed to go public. But that was then. Today Series Fs are not that rare. Indian B2B marketplace Moglix just raised one, which doubled its valuation to $2.6 billion. Tiger co-led the $250 million round. And if you are looking down the barrel of a blizzard, TechCrunch's Equity podcast has your downtime covered. Enjoy!

European, North American edtech startups see funding triple in 2021 Pre-pandemic, VCs were notoriously reluctant to invest in education-related companies. Today, edtech startups are seeing higher average deal sizes, more seed and pre-seed funding from non-VC investors, and an influx of generalists. According to Rhys Spence, head of research at Brighteye Ventures, funding for edtech startups based in Europe and North America trebled over the last year. “Exciting companies are spawning across geographies and verticals, and even generalist investors are building conviction that the sector is capable of producing the same kind of outsized returns generated in fintech, healthtech and other sectors,” writes Spence. (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: Bet_Noire / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Northern Light Venture Capital's He Huang says the Chinese robotics market is overheated: Per the investor, robotics in China is "riddled with speculation and overvalued companies," calling the situation a bubble. It's worth noting that China's central government is working to retool where its tech investment dollars flow. Robinhood goes down, back up: This morning, in the wake of the company's lackluster earnings report, TechCrunch dug through why Robinhood's stock sold off in after-hours, pre-market, and early trading sessions yesterday and today. And then Robinhood turned around and gained ample ground during the rest of the day. It's a weird market moment, but good news for the U.S. fintech all the same. Google to allow legacy G Suite users to move to free accounts: After angering techies still using the "G Suite legacy free edition" by announcing that it was ending the program and requiring payment, the search giant has decided to "offer more options to existing users," TechCrunch reports. Somewhere inside of Google, a business decision just met the market and was flipped on its head. Makes you wonder who is calling the shots over there, and if they previously worked for McKinsey.

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