SoundHound will go public after its merger agreement with special purpose acquisition company Archimedes is complete in Q1, said the voice AI platform Tuesday. SoundHound shares will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker SOUN after the transaction closes, it said. Voice AI adoption “is rapidly expanding, with the market opportunity expected to reach $160 billion by 2026,” it said. SoundHound’s technology "powers the voice experience" in millions of products, said the company. Vizio’s first voice remote was based on SoundHound’s AI natural language platform (see 2106020050).
Lattice Semiconductor bought AI company Mirametrix in an all-cash transaction, said Lattice Monday. Mirametrix is a software company specializing in advanced AI for computer vision applications, said Lattice. Mirametrix software is deployed in more than 20 million end-user systems worldwide, it said.
Spotify agreed to buy Findaway, the digital audiobook distribution company, said Spotify Thursday. This lets Spotify speed growth of its audiobook catalog and gives publishers, authors and independent creators a means to reach new audiences, it said. It's expected to close this quarter. Findaway will keep its headquarters in Solon, Ohio, under founder-CEO Mitch Kroll. Kroll will report to Nir Zicherman, Spotify head-audiobooks.
Consumer advocates said to reject changes proposed by Verizon and Tracfone to the California Public Utilities Commission’s conditional draft OK of the companies’ combining. CPUC members plan to vote Nov. 18 on Verizon/Tracfone, showed a Tuesday agenda. The companies disagreed last week with state LifeLine and customer migration conditions in the draft (see 2111050039). The companies' proposed edits are “factually incorrect, legally unsupported, and, if adopted, would make this merger detrimental to the interests of California consumers,” the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office replied Tuesday. The companies seek to “weaken or outright eliminate critical conditions” for low-income customers, PAO said. The Utility Reform Network and the Center for Accessible Technology agreed. Verizon said the proposed decision, with its recommended changes, “accomplishes the goal of ensuring that the Transaction is in the public interest.” Additional conditions proposed by the other three groups are “unnecessary and appropriate,” it said.
An investor group of six venture capitalists will buy McAfee for more than $14 billion and take it private, said the cybersecurity vendor Monday. The $26 a share purchase price is a 22.6% premium over McAfee’s $21.21 closing share price Thursday, the last trading day before media reports surfaced about a potential sale, it said. McAfee went public last year as a pure-play consumer cybersecurity company, with Intel and TPG among its key shareholders. The McAfee board approved the transaction, which is expected to close in 2022's first half. McAfee canceled its Tuesday Q3 earnings call. Revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 25 grew 24% to $491 million, said McAfee.
Penguin Random House's acquisition of ViacomCBS' Simon & Schuster would give Penguin, already the world's largest book publisher, "outsized influence" over what's published in the U.S. and what authors are paid, DOJ said Tuesday in a Clayton Act antitrust complaint (docket 21-cv-02886) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to block the transaction. ViacomCBS said in an SEC filing the Simon & Schuster purchase agreement includes commitments by Penguin to defend any litigation that would prevent the deal, as well as a termination fee to ViacomCBS if the transaction doesn't close for regulatory reasons. ViacomCBS, named as a defendant in the suit, said the Justice allegations "are without merit and [it] intend[s] to defend against them vigorously." The $2.2 billion purchase was announced a year ago.
WideOpenWest completed the sale of its Chicago, Anne Arundel, Maryland, and Evansville, Indiana, service areas to Astound Broadband for $661 million, it said Monday. That deal, along with the completed sales in September of its Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, service areas to Atlantic Broadband, gives it $1.8 billion to lower debt and invest in its broadband strategy, it said.
Activision bought mobile game developer Digital Legends, and said Thursday it will put the development studio to work immediately on the next yet-to-be-named game title in its Call to Duty franchise. Barcelona-based Digital Legends is best known for the Respawnables series of mobile games, said Activision.
ViacomCBS is buying a majority of Spanish-language content company Fox TeleColombia & Estudios TeleMexico from Disney and the founding family, it said Thursday. Viacom said it will run Fox TeleColombia as "a collaborative partnership" with the founding family (see personals section of this issue). It said the deal gives it access to Fox TeleColombia studio operations in Columbia and Mexico and the company's content library, with the content to be used on the Paramount+ and Pluto TV streaming services and on Viacom linear networks globally. ViacomCBS also is buying AT&T's Chilevision (see 2104050031).
The FTC restored a “long-established practice of routinely restricting future acquisitions for merging parties that pursue anticompetitive mergers,” the commission announced Monday. Commissioners Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson dissented in the 3-2 vote approving a prior approval policy statement. The statement “puts industry on notice” that merger enforcement orders will “require acquisitive firms to obtain prior approval from the agency before closing any future transaction affecting each relevant market for which a violation was alleged, for a minimum of ten years,” the agency said. A 1995 policy statement rescinded in July (see 2107210061) “had fueled consolidation by preventing the agency from imposing these merger restrictions,” the agency said.