Connect with us

Technology

Turning Down Billions: Grading 15 Tech Companies that Declined Big Takeover Offers

Published

9 years ago

on

Turning Down Billions: Grading 15 Tech Companies that Declined Big Takeover Offers

Turning Down Billions: Grading 15 Tech Companies that Declined Big Takeover Offers

If you were to ask legendary investor Peter Thiel about the most important moment in Facebook history, he would point to an exchange in July 2006.

Yahoo had made the lucrative offer of $1 billion for Facebook, and Peter Thiel as well as board member Jim Breyer got called into a meeting about the deal with Mark Zuckerberg.

“Both Breyer and myself on balance thought we probably should take the money,” recalls Thiel. “But Zuckerberg started the meeting like, ‘This is kind of a formality, just a quick board meeting, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here’.”

Thiel and Breyer thought Facebook should take the money. Zuckerberg, who was 22 years old at the time, had so much conviction that Yahoo did not understand the value of the company, that he dismissed the meeting as just a formality. Thiel and Breyer eventually backed Zuckerberg based on this, and the decision paid giant dividends.

Facebook’s market capitalization is now $288 billion, or 288x the amount offered by Yahoo in 2006.

Today’s infographic recalls 15 offers to emerging tech companies that were declined. Then, looking back in retrospect, it shows whether the deal was a “win” or a “fail” based on the current value of the company.

Original graphic by: Empire Flippers

Related Topics:
Click for Comments

Technology

Visualizing AI Patents by Country

See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.

Published

2 days ago

on

April 24, 2024

By

Visualizing AI Patents by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.

From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.

YearChinaEU and UKU.S.RoWGlobal Total
20103071379845711,999
20115161299805812,206
20129261129506602,648
20131,035919706272,723
20141,278971,0786673,120
20151,7211101,1355393,505
20161,6211281,2987143,761
20172,4281441,4891,0755,136
20184,7411551,6741,5748,144
20199,5303223,2112,72015,783
202013,0714065,4414,45523,373
202121,9076238,2197,51938,268
202235,3151,17312,07713,69962,264

In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.

While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.

Key Facts About AI Patents

According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.

In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).

In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.

Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist

If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.

Continue Reading
Appian-Capital

Subscribe

Popular