It was the first week of August, but you wouldn’t know it by the series of blockbuster tech and media deals announced this week. Here’s what you may have missed:
Capital Gains: Didi buys Uber China, and Airbnb is raising $850 million
It was a very busy week in dealmaking in tech and media circles
Todd Bernard / Recode
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
- Uber, the global ride-hailing giant, agreed to sell its China business to its archrival Didi Chuxing in a deal that valued the combined company at $35 billion. For Uber, the deal gave it a nearly 20 percent stake in Didi and simultaneously cast into doubt the future of the Didi-led, global anti-Uber alliance (Recode).
- Time Warner bought a 10 percent stake in Hulu for $583 million, valuing the online video platform at $5.8 billion. Time Warner is expected to allow Hulu to stream its channels on a live, online TV service the site is planning, but won’t contribute programming to the site’s existing service (Recode).
- Birchbox, the six-year-old beauty e-commerce startup, raised $15 million from existing investors to give it a bridge to profitability. The popular service has revenue of around $200 million and is still growing, but had suffered through two rounds of layoffs this year (Recode).
- Airbnb, the mammoth home-sharing service, is raising $850 million at a $30 billion valuation. That’s more than the market caps of Hyatt and Marriott combined (Bloomberg).
- Drizly, a delivery startup that wants to be the Amazon for alcohol, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The Boston-based startup has now raised more than $32 million in total financing (TechCrunch).
- Deliveroo, a London-based startup that delivers meals from local restaurants in 30 minutes or less, raised a monster $275 million investment led by the private equity firm Bridgepoint. The funds will be used to try to fend off Uber’s competing service, UberEats, as it expands in Europe (The New York Times).
- Yieldbot, a New York City-based advertising technology firm, raised $35 million amid a frosty climate in the ad-tech industry. The startup helps marketers target ads to users based on their web browsing (The Wall Street Journal).
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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