To The Moon

Merger & Acquisition in Vogue? Is partnership (of all sorts), the way forward for any company to mount a challenge against its competitor? Apparently it seems to be in vogue: (see below) $Microsoft(MSFT)$’s 2019 $1 billion investment in OpenAI resulting in ChatGPT. $NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$’s February 2024 13F filing in $SoundHound AI Inc(SOUN)$. Google’s 2024 $2 billion investment in Anthropic’s Claude - suite of large langugage models (LLMs). Now it seems $Alphabet(GOOG)$ is on cue to acquire $HubSpot(HUBS)$. (see below) HubSpot - Background. It is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales & customer service. Founded in 2006, its revenue grew from $255,000 (2007) to $15.6 million (2010) in a short span of 3 years. It IPO-ed on 25 Aug 2014 at $25 per share. It peaked in November 2021 at $840 per share. That’s a +3,360% in 7 years. Very impressive indeed ! Apart from growing its business organically, HubSpot also acquired companies along the way. In 2010, it acquired Oneforty, the Twitter app store when Twitter itself did not have a built-in app store in the early 2010s. In 2017, it acquired Kemvi, that applies artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help sales teams. 4 years later in 2021, HubSpot reported revenues of $1 billion. In February 2021, HubSpot was onto its 3rd acquisition of The Hustle, a content and email newsletter company focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs. In November 2023, its latest acquisition was a B2B intelligence firm — Clearbit. In an ever changing business environment, HubSpot manages to stay one step ahead of the demand curve and benefitted from it. It is no wonder too that Glassdoor named HubSpot (a) Best place to work in 2020 and (b) 2nd Best place to work in 2022. Obviously the company must be doing something right. Fast forward to April 2024, it was Reuters (again) that reported of a possible acquisition of HubSpot by Alphabet. (see above) Since the news broke, HubSpot has gained approx. +7.17% in its stock price. It is still 22.83% off its peak price; implying the potential remains. Presently / Currently. Alphabet is in talk/negotiation to acquire HubSpot, that is valued at $30 billion. This will make HubSpot, Google’s biggest acquisition ever, following its other purchases: (see below) October 2006 - YouTube, $1.65 billion. March 2008 - Doubleclick, $3.1 billion. May 2012 - Motorola Mobility, $12.5 billion. Sold in January 2014. June 2013 - Waze, $1.15 billion. January 2014 - Nest Labs, $3.2 billion. February 2020 - Looker, $2.6 billion. January 2021 - Fitbit, $2.1 billion. This strategic acquisition will enable Google to compete headlong with Microsoft in the cloud application market. Based on TD Cowen, MD - Derrick Wood’s analysis: Google has the “drive / ambition” to win market share from Microsoft in the productivity suite. They could achieve this, by leveraging HubSpot to bundle applications together for clients. Although, Google is the 3rd-largest cloud services provider, it holds less than half of the market share of Microsoft. (see above) Google is making a conscious effort to chip away at the cloud computing pie. Based off Bloomberg’s latest update, it is still a “work in progress”, nothing is cast in stone yet. My viewpoints: (mine only) The race for AI dominance is still up in the air. It is still anyone’s game and still too early in the race to confirm an outright winner. Sundar Pichai will have to draw on his 8 years 7 months of experiences as CEO to keep Google in the race and maintain its lead position. What are all the tricks that Google has up its sleeves, that it has not yet reveal ? In a strange way, I feel that Google is still leading in the AI race, even if it is by a silver. Must Read: Click on below titles to access. Give a like & help to Repost ok. Thanks. TSLA fell after NVDA praised its Self Driving ? TSLA, AMD, MARA: Still Rule This Week ? Economic Data rules US Market this Week. Nvidia ? Do you think think Google will buy HubSpot ultimately ? Do you think Google will be able to make further inroad and grows its Google Cloud computing service slowly but surely ? If you find this post interesting, give it wings! ️ Repost and share the insights ? Do consider “Follow me” and get firsthand read of my daily new post. Thank you. @Daily_Discussion @TigerPM @TigerStars @Tiger_SG @TigerEvents