The European Commission has approved Microsoft’s $19.7 billion bid to buy Nuance Communications. The regulator said on Tuesday the proposed acquisition “would raise no competition concerns” within the European Union. In analyzing the bid, it found that “Microsoft and Nuance offer very different products.” Moreover, it believes the company will continue to face “strong” competition from other firms in the future.

Before today, the US and Australia had both signed off on the purchase, but it’s not yet a done deal. On December 13th, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said it would investigate the transaction. With the regulator accepting public comments until January 10th, 2022, it’s unlikely the deal will close by the end of 2021 as Microsoft had said it would when it first announced its intention to buy Nuance. 

Meta, formerly Facebook, is firmly in the FTC's crosshairs over its various acquisitions that the agency believes may have been made to dominate the space and eliminate competition. According to The Information, one of the purchases the Federal Trade Commission is looking into is its $400 million deal to acquire Within, the developer of popular virtual reality workout app Supernatural for the Oculus platform. 

The agency reportedly opened a probe into the purchase after Thanksgiving, almost a month after the companies announced the acquisition back in October. If the report is true — neither the FTC nor the companies confirmed the regulatory review to the publication — then Within and Meta wouldn't be able to finalize the deal for another year. It could take even longer than that if the agency challenges it in court.

Within wasn't the only VR app developer that Meta had acquired, but the others were apparently too small to be investigated. VR fitness apps, like at-home workout equipment, soared in popularity during the lockdown, and Supernatural quickly became popular after its launch in April 2020. As The Information notes, one of the FTC's possible lines of inquiry is whether Meta was planning to develop a VR workout app of its own. It will take Meta less time to snap up an existing product than make one of its own, after all.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg famously said in the past that "it's better to buy than to compete," with regards to Facebook's Instagram acquisition. The FTC recently filed new antitrust charges against the company, accusing it of using its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions in 2012 and 2014 to secure its position in the market. Meta is still also facing an investigation over its reported $400 million Giphy purchase in 2020.

Sony has acquired Seattle-based developer Valkyrie Entertainment. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed. Founded in 2002, it’s best known for providing co-development services to other game studios. In the past, Valkyrie has worked with Sony, Microsoft and Riot to help on titles like God of War, Halo Infinite and Valorant. Before today’s announcement, it was working on God of War: Ragnarok with Sony’s Santa Monica Studio.

The acquisition was announced by Herman Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios. “Valkyrie’s diverse capabilities will be welcomed by every team at PlayStation Studios as we continue to focus on delivering extraordinary gaming experiences,” he said in a statement.

For Sony, the deal caps off a year full of studio purchases. In the last 12 months, the company has added Housemarque, Nixxes Software, Firesprite, Bluepoint Games and now Valkyrie Entertainment to its first-party lineup for a total of 17 studios under its banner. Sony used to be a lot more methodical when it came to its talent acquisitions. Between 2010 and 2020, it only added two studios: Sucker Punch Productions and Insomniac Games. If there’s a reason for the change in pace, it likely has at least something to do with Microsoft’s $7.5 billion deal to buy Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media in 2020. 

The UK government apparently isn't satisfied with its initial probe of NVIDIA's ARM purchase. As Reutersreports, The Sunday Timeshas heard Digital and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries will order the country's Competition & Markets Authority to conduct a "phase two" investigation of NVIDIA's deal over national security issues. The announcement could come as soon as next week, The Times said.

A second investigation would reportedly last about six months. After that, officials could either block the deal, approve it as-is or require concessions.

The country's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport declined to comment on the story. We've asked NVIDIA for comment. The tech firm has focused its energy so far on downplaying concerns about ARM's neutrality if the deal closes, promising an open licensing model that treats customers fairly.

Any second investigation wouldn't necessarily spell doom for NVIDIA's acquisition. It would suggest the government has some qualms, however, and that NVIDIA might have to make some sacrifices. At the least, the company would have to be patient — it wouldn't get UK approval until 2022 at the earliest, and it would still have to wait for other regulators before finalizing the merger.

Spotify could soon be home to a lot more audiobooks. The streaming service has acquired audiobook platform Findaway, the companies announced. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition suggests Spotify is looking to build out its own library of audiobook titles.

Findaway is an Ohio-based company that boasts a catalog of more than 325,000 titles, according to its website. The company has partnerships with Apple, Amazon and other retail heavyweights, and also makes tools for audiobook creators. While it’s not yet clear how Spotify might integrate Findaway’s catalog into its own service, the company said in a statement that the deal would help it “quickly scale its audiobook catalog” and create new opportunities for authors and publishers.

The acquisition isn’t Spotify’s first foray into audiobooks. The company has previously experimented with a handful of celebrity-narrated public domain classics, and a Harry Potter audiobook at the start of coronavirus lockdowns in 2020. But the acquisition signals the streaming platform now has much greater ambitions in the space. The move also echoes Spotify’s approach to podcasts, as the company used a number ofacquisitions to build out its catalog and creation tools. So while it’s so far unclear what exactly Findaway means for Spotify subscribers and would-be audiobook listeners, it seems there are a lot more audiobooks in the company’s future.

On Friday, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Two Hat, a company best known for its AI content moderation tools. Financial details have not been disclosed, but Microsoft did share its vision for how they’ll work together moving forward. Over the years, the two companies have frequently collaborated to make Xbox Live and other gaming communities safer, and by the sounds of it, that will be the focus of Two Hat moving forward.

“We have partnered with Xbox and the Microsoft team for several years and share the passion and drive to make meaningful change in the advancement of online civility and citizenship,” said Two Hat founder Chris Priebe and CEO Steve Parkis in a joint statement. “We are committed to ensuring safety, inclusion and online health and wellness are always at the forefront of our work and through joining Microsoft, we can provide the greatest concentration of talent, resources and insight necessary to further this vision.”

Before today’s announcement, Microsoft was only one of Two Hat’s customers, and that won’t change following the acquisition. “This is a deep investment in assisting and serving Two Hat’s existing customers, prospective new customers and multiple product and service experiences here at Microsoft,” the company said. “With this acquisition, we will help global online communities to be safer and inclusive for everyone to participate, positively contribute and thrive.”

Since 2019, Microsoft has placed an emphasis on combating toxicity and abuse. "Gaming is for everyone," Xbox chief Phil Spencer said at the time. This acquisition should tie in nicely with that goal.

PayPal has stated that it's "not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time," effectively denying rumors of an imminent $45 billion acquisition first reported by Bloomberg. The one-line release doesn't confirm or deny that the companies were ever in talks, but the response seems to end any possibility of a deal happening in the near future. Pinterest has yet to comment on the rumor. 

The deal seemed odd at first glance, considering that PayPal's banking and merchant business is far removed from a social network like Pinterest. PayPal recently acquired buy now, pay later provider Paidy and has gotten into cryptocurrency trading, but those things are at least related to its main business. However, Pinterest does have one commerce foothold with social shopping via pins that allow you to make purchases directly from the app. 

FTC Chair Lina Khan wants the commission to identify potential loopholes in its merger reporting guidelines that allowed some acquisitions to "fly under the radar," according to CNBC. That's one of the FTC's key takeaways after completing its inquiry into the unreported acquisitions by Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft from 2010 to 2019. The commission has published its findings over a year after it started the inquiry in February 2020, focusing on 616 transactions valued at over $1 million. 

Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, only mergers and acquisitions exceeding $92 million in value need to be reported to the FTC and the DOJ for antitrust review. The FTC found that the five tech giants made 616 non-reportable transactions over the course of almost a decade and that quite a big chunk actually exceeded the HSR threshold. Of the 616, 94 exceeded the threshold but weren't reported, because they met certain criteria or because statutory/regulatory exemptions applied to the transaction.

Three more transactions would have exceeded the HSR threshold if the debts or liabilities the acquirer assumed were added to the total amount. Nine additional transactions would've also gone above the threshold if the "deferred or contingent compensation to founders and key employees" were added. The FTC didn't mention any specific acquisition in its report, but Bloomberg mentioned Facebook's acquisition of Giphy last year. Bloomberg says Giphy paid a dividend to investors to lower its assets so that antitrust officials wouldn't have to be notified. While Facebook didn't reveal how much it paid for the GIF database, reports say it cost the social network $400 million. 

In addition to identifying potential loopholes in HSR reporting, Khan also wants the commission to learn from international peers, since a third of the acquisitions involved foreign companies. Finally, the chairperson wants to scrutinize the use of non-compete clauses in mergers. In more than 75 percent of the transactions investigated, the key personnel of the acquired companies were required to sign non-compete agreements.

Khan said in a statement:

"While the Commission’s enforcement actions have already focused on how digital platforms can buy their way out of competing, this study highlights the systemic nature of their acquisition strategies..It captures the extent to which these firms have devoted tremendous resources to acquiring start-ups, patent portfolios, and entire teams of technologists — and how they were able to do so largely outside of our purview."

PayPal is continuing its push into buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services with the acquisition of Japanese company Paidy for 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion), Bloomberg has reported. That represents its second largest acquisition to date after the $4 billion dollar purchase of online coupon aggregator Honey. 

BNPL services let users divide purchases into multiple payments with paying any interest. Instead, PayPal and other providers make money by charging fees to merchants when a consumer buys a product, much as credit card providers do. PayPal's move follows Jack Dorsey's Square much larger acquisition of Australian BNPL firm AfterPay for $29 billion. 

Paidy differs from other BNPL firms in that it allows Japanese consumers to purchase items online and then pay them off in person at local convenience stores. PayPal doesn't currently offer a BNPL service in Japan, so the acquisition will help it break into that market. 

“Paidy pioneered buy-now-pay-later solutions tailored to the Japanese market,” said PayPal Japan chief Peter Kenevan. “Combining Paidy’s brand, capabilities and talented team with PayPal’s expertise, resources and global scale will create a strong foundation to accelerate our momentum in this strategically important market.”

Microsoft's latest acquisition could add an easy-to-use video editing experience to its software suite. The tech giant has purchased a startup called Clipchamp, which is known for its in-browser video creation and editing tool. In its announcement, Microsoft says Clipchamp's approach combines "the simplicity of a web app with the ability to process video using the full computing power of a PC with graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration," which is "something that was formerly limited to traditional video applications."

Clipchamp specifically targets non-professionals and non-creatives — people who don't have or know how to use specialized software for videos, in other words. "Our mission is to empower anyone to tell stories worth sharing and millions of people around the world... We will continue to make video creation even easier, more accessible and fun," company CEO Alexander Dreiling wrote in a post announcing the acquisition. 

Neither party has disclosed the terms of their agreement, but as CNBC notes, Clipchamp said in July that it has 17 million registered users with an adoption rate that's up 54 percent year over year. The service saw huge growth in 9:16 aspect ratio exports, in particular, which are commonly used for TikTok and Instagram or Facebook Stories. Microsoft was one of its clients before the acquisition, along with Google. While Microsoft has yet to announce how it will offer Clipchamp to its customers, it called the tool a "natural fit" for its cloud-powered productivity experiences in Microsoft 365. A spokesperson also told CNBC that the tech giant will eventually introduce a process to convert existing Clipchamp users to Microsoft subscribers.