The online stock-photo marketplace Shutterstock announced Tuesday it would acquire Giphy from Meta Platforms for $53 million, a significant loss for Meta, which acquired Giphy in 2020 for $315 million.
The acquisition is an all-cash deal, and in an investor presentation, Shutterstock said it would maintain its full-year revenue guidance. The acquisition would add “minimal revenue in 2023,” Shutterstock noted.
The deal is expected to close in June. Shutterstock’s shares rose nearly 2% in morning trading Tuesday.
U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority had ordered Meta to divest Giphy in 2022, citing potential anti-competitive effects. The CMA disclosed it was probing the deal in June 2020.
Giphy, which is a platform for searching for and using animated images in messaging apps, was well-integrated into Meta’s ecosystem, and had been an acquisition target for the social-media company years before Meta acquired it in 2020.
Technology acquisitions have faced heavy scrutiny from the U.K.’s anti-trust authority in recent months. The CMA blocked Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision in April, citing potentially adverse effects to the cloud gaming industry.
Like many technology companies, Meta has faced stiffening regulatory oversight in the U.S. as well. The FTC proposed a “blanket” ban preventing Meta from monetizing young user’s data and alleged Meta had violated a 2020 privacy order. In a statement, Meta described the FTC effort as a “political stunt.”
“We are grateful to the Giphy team during this uncertain time for their business, and wish them every success,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC at the time of the divestiture order.
Employees move semiconductor testers on the assembly line of the Advantest Corp. plant in Ora, Japan on Aug. 10, 2012.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asian tech and chip-related stocks fell Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would go into effect as planned.
Trump also said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, having already levied 10% duties that came into effect in February.
Asian tech stocks were also pressured by the near 9% fall in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares overnight.
Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Advantest plunged as much as 9%, to its lowest level since last October, while Chipmaker Renesas Electronics lost 6.35%.
Tech investor SoftBank Group dropped 6.25%. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son plans to borrow $16 billion to invest in artificial intelligence, according to a news report that came out over the weekend.
Over in South Korea, shares in SK Hynix lost as much as 3.26%, while Samsung Electronics bucked the trend to rise nearly 1% following the launch of its Galaxy A series smartphones with AI-powered features.
Chinese AI-linked stocks also fell with Alibaba and Kingsoft Cloud down as much as 2.23% and 8.46% respectively.
Meanwhile, shopping platform Meituan lost 0.62%, electronic vehicle maker BYD plunged 6.60%, Xpeng traded 1.97% lower and Li Auto lost 2.68%.
Chinese tech major Tencent‘s shares were trading 0.91% higher in Hong Kong.
Nvidia’s headquarters on Feb. 26, 2025, in Santa Clara, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Malaysia said it will take “necessary action” against Malaysian companies if they are found to be involved in a fraud case linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China.
That comes after Singapore Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam reportedly said on Monday that the servers in the fraud case may have contained Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips which were then sent to Malaysia.
On Feb. 27, Singapore charged three men with fraud, with local broadcaster CNA saying it understood the cases are linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips.
“The question is whether Malaysia was a final destination or from Malaysia, it went to somewhere else, which we do not know for certain at this point,” Shanmugam told reporters.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister for investment, trade and industry said the country has no information that data center companies operating in Malaysia are “not using the chips that they are supposed to be using.”
He said such servers are imported by data center companies such as Microsoft, AWS and Google.
Singapore’s Shanmugam had said Nvidia’s chips were embedded in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies, before they went to Malaysia. He added that “there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers.”
When asked if Malaysia knew where the servers were now, Zafrul replied, “we don’t know,” adding that Malaysian authorities are discussing with the data center companies and checking if they have gone to the right parties.
“Right now, there’s no such cases in Malaysia to date, and we are investigating if they are. We’ll definitely discuss this with Singapore and well, the companies would then have to be held accountable by the relevant authorities,” he added.
CNA also reported two Singaporeans were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers.
Citing charge sheets, CNA said they allegedly made false representations in 2024 that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the “authorized ultimate consignee of end users.”
The charges also come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Department is looking into whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, Reuters said “organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.”
Zafrul told CNBC that Malaysia will be checking the chips’ destination, but added, “what I can say today [is] the chips are not meant to be in Malaysia in the first place. So the question is, why is it going out of Singapore?”
Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and chief executive officer of 23andme Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
23andMe‘s special committee of independent directors on Monday rejected CEO Anne Wojcicki’s proposal to take the distressed genetic testing company private.
Wojcicki submitted a proposal to the committee on Sunday, offering to acquire all of the company’s outstanding shares for 41 cents each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stock plunged 33% on Monday to close at $1.47, down more than 99% from its peak in 2021.
Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital submitted a prior bid in February to take the company private for $2.53 per share. Days later, New Mountain told Wojcicki it was no longer interested in participating in a potential acquisition and would discontinue discussions, the filing said.
23andMe’s special committee said that Wojcicki’s proposal represented an 84% decrease from the prior offer and determined not to go forward, according to a release on Monday.
“The Special Committee has reviewed Ms. Wojcicki’s acquisition proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and has unanimously determined to reject the proposal,” the directors said.
23andMe didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Following a turbulent 2024, 23andMe announced plans in January to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.