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Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, speaks at the startup’s Config conference in San Francisco on May 10, 2022.

Figma

As Figma was in talks about an acquisition with Adobe last year, the design software startup’s CEO, Dylan Field, approached another public company to gauge potential interest, according to a regulatory filing.

That company was Microsoft, CNBC confirmed with a person familiar with the matter. Those talks weren’t serious and an offer never materialized, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

Adobe ultimately agreed to buy Figma in September for $20 billion, the software company’s biggest purchase ever. In a year that saw tech stocks crater and the IPO market freeze, Adobe paid roughly 50 times annual recurring revenue for Figma, which was growing rapidly and encroaching on Adobe’s turf.

The deal still awaits clearance from competition regulators in the U.K. and in the European Union, Wednesday’s filing says.

Microsoft is intimately familiar with Figma’s technology and how quickly it can spread inside large organizations due to its focus on collaboration. The software lets people work together on app and website design from disparate locations. Prior to the Adobe deal, CNBC reported on Figma’s growing popularity inside Microsoft.

However, Microsoft had its hands full with its own mega-deal. In January, the company agreed to buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion and would soon face calls for an antitrust investigation by U.S. lawmakers. In December, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the acquisition.

Party A

Figma’s deal-related chats with Microsoft date back to May, after acquisition talks had begun with Adobe. Field told representatives of a publicly held technology company, identified only as Party A, that Figma might receive an acquisition offer, “and asked whether Party A would be interested in making an offer to acquire Figma,” the filing said.

Qatalyst Partners, Figma’s financial advisor, met with someone at Party A to gauge the company’s interest. An executive there offered to sign a confidentiality agreement and meet with Figma management, according to the filing.

Figma gave Party A — Microsoft — confidential details as part of the process. Three weeks after Field first reached out to the company, Party A said it was not interested in exploring an acquisition, the filing said.

Still, Field tried to drive up the price. By July, after Adobe had said it would pay $20 billion for Figma, Field proposed a price of $23 billion “and a retention pool valued at approximately $3 billion.” That proposal went to David Wadhwani, president of Adobe’s digital media unit. Wadhwani said Adobe wasn’t willing to increase its offer.

A few days later, Field came back to Wadhwani and asked about a $21.5 billion price. Wadhwani told him that the $20 billion price was firm.

Adobe expects that current Figma shareholders will own about 4% of Adobe’s outstanding stock once the deal closes later this year.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.

The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.

Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.

The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.

Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.

Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”

Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.

Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at $2.4 billion valuation

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at .4 billion valuation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.

Reuters

Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.

Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.

Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.

The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.

The news comes days after OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines like GoogleMicrosoft‘s Bing and Perplexity. Last month, OpenAI also closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.

Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post’s non-endorsement a ‘blunder’

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post's non-endorsement a 'blunder'

Watch CNBC's full interview with IAC and Expedia chairman Barry Diller

To Barry Diller, a friend of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in tomorrow’s presidential election was “absolutely principled” — and poorly timed, he said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller said.

Diller is chairperson of both online travel company Expedia and IAC, which owns media platforms and websites like Dotdash Meredith and Care.com. He and Bezos appear to have been close friends for years, with Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosting Bezos’s engagement party to fiancee Lauren Sanchez.

The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race or for future presidential races came directly from Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to an article published by two of the Post’s own reporters.

The move prompted public condemnation from several staff writers, a flood of at least 250,000 digital subscription cancellations and the resignations of at least three editorial board members.

Bezos defended his position in his own op-ed late last month, calling the move a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restore low public trust in media and journalism.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote, emphasizing that the decision to not endorse a candidate was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.”

Diller said he spoke to Bezos following the decision.

“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said. “The mistake they made — and it was a mistake admitted by him — was timing.”

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