For all the talk about how “hackquisitions” were circumventing the traditional guardrails around M&A, we seem to have overlooked something vital: for such deals to work, they have to actually, you know, work. And the early returns suggest that perhaps they’re not really working out…
About Those “Hackquisitions”…
The first crop certainly haven’t panned out…
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Back on the road next week…
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
Thoughts On…
🐥 Amazon Chickens Out of OpenAI Movie – I was just wondering what was going on with Artificial given that filming wrapped months ago, but we hadn’t yet seen a trailer. Well, now we may know why… The movie is suddenly homeless. Regardless of how anti-OpenAI and/or anti-Altman this movie is, it’s obviously an awful look for Amazon to kill it. After it’s done, no less. The message from all of the tech players playing in Hollywood has always been that it’s about the art and that they wouldn’t meddle in artistic decisions. I mean, I guess they’re not here, technically, just opting not to distribute the movie after promising to do so. That’s arguably worse. And it’s especially worse seeing as it’s the same company that paid $75M to make a documentary about the President’s wife. To keep layering on: the Melania movie featured a disgraced director exiled from Hollywood, while Artificial has one of the hottest directors in the world. If all of that gave Amazon pause, it certainly didn’t stop them. Once they saw a cut, they clearly thought it was better to cut ties here, rather than risk angering their AI partner in which they have a massive equity stake. Yes, those deals came about after the movie was greenlit, but my god, how shortsighted. Artificial will obviously find a new home – Amazon better hope the movie isn’t any good. But I’m not sure how much it will matter in Hollywood with the Scarlet Letter of meddling now firmly affixed to Amazon’s studios. What does, say, Denis Villeneuve think of this, one wonders… [Puck 🔒]
📺 Netflix as the New Cable TV Front-End – Their deal with France’s TF1 (which I first wrote about a year ago when it was announced, noting that Netflix really is now TV) makes Netflix the hub for both services, blending recommendations, ‘Continue Watching’, etc. This is a far deeper integration than what Amazon and others are doing with their ‘Channels’ strategy and clearly seems to be the future of streaming in many countries (Amazon has similar deals in place around the world for Prime Video). And as YouTube TV continues to eat traditional cable’s lunch, might we see other regional cable providers in the US hand over the keys to Netflix? Comcast, the largest, would presumably try to do it through Peacock? But Peacock remains a far smaller player. More interesting would be if YouTube tries to get into this game. There’s probably too much conflict with YouTube TV, but it increasingly feels like Netflix and YouTube are on a collision course to be the main hub/UI of streaming. I mean, they already are in many ways, but with others’ content – including perhaps Peacock and the like. This also takes Netflix deeper down the live content rabbit hole, of course – and advertising too, though it sounds like those details are still in progress. [THR]
👻 Snap Spins Off An AI Company – This almost reads like a reverse-“hackquisition” in a way. ‘Dotmo’ will take a team from and have a licensing agreement with Snap, in return, Snap will get a large equity stake in the stand-alone company. But they won’t be investing at all – because this is about Snap saving money, after all – but Snap co-founder Bobby Murphy will be in a personal capacity. Spin-offs are nothing new, of course. But again, not investing but having a co-founder invest is an interesting hack. As I wrote earlier this week, it feels increasingly like Snap made the wrong bet on AR versus AI – yes, they were betting on both to some degree, but it was clearly the wrong mix. At the same time, now they don’t have the capital or the mandate from Wall Street to invest in both going forward so… Dotmo will go it “alone”. And presumably have no trouble raising more outside funding as an AI company. Perhaps at a large enough valuation, it can reverse-acquire Snap, Elon-style? [TechCrunch]
🐆 Kissing the Leopard’s Ass Before He Eats Your Face – How shocking it must be for Zuckerberg and Bezos to learn that President Trump is mocking them behind their backs, showing off the private messages they send him to others to showcase them “kissing my ass”. Ahead of the inauguration, as Zuck embarrassingly scrambled to showcase his new allegiance, I asked, “What’s the world record for kissing ass? We’re likely to find out.” Trump clearly agrees! And can’t stop telling everyone all about it. With Tim Cook too. Even more embarrassing for these guys: one of the people Trump likes to show these message too is Elon – his on-again/off-again PaidPal. “First-class groveling,” was his quoted assessment as he must have laughed while Bezos tried to convince Trump to ditch SpaceX for Blue Origin for some contracts. That’s the thing: given their business interests, what choice do these guys have but to grovel? If they don’t, they get thrown into the doghouse. They undoubtedly could be less overt, but Trump loves the performative nature of such things. Hence, Cook’s golden trinket. And you could probably argue that this humiliation has paid off, quite literally! But the real price was dignity, which they’ll have to live with selling off. Which will look especially bad when all of them inevitably start to turn on Trump again as he becomes a lame duck. [Wired 🔒]
I Quote…
“When I told that story to George Lucas in 1977, when we were in Hawaii together getting ready for the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, he said, ‘I have something better than Bond. It’s called Indiana Smith,’ which is what it was called at the time. He told me the premise of the Indiana Jones series, and that’s how I got that job.”
– Steven Spielberg, revealing how the Cubby Broccoli rejecting him on the notion of directing a James Bond film (twice) led to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I linked to this last week too, but the quotes are just amazing.
