Back in 2013, Facebook offered to acquire Snap for close to $3 billion. The ephemeral messaging service of course declined that proposal, and now appears to have spurned another deal to the tune of $30 billion from Google.
Reported by Business Insider, this deal is apparently considered an “open secret” in the tech industry and among Snap’s senior executives. Such buyout talks intensified before the Snapchat maker’s IPO in early March, though the report notes that informal talks are quite common during public offerings and fundraising rounds.
Additionally, it’s unclear how far talks progressed and how serious they were, with Snap noting that rumors on formal discussions are false. Meanwhile, Google declined to comment to BI.
This $30 billion offer according to one source in the report has supposedly remained “on table since the IPO.” As of writing, Snap has a market capitalization of around $15 billion. Such a deal from Google is roughly twice the company’s current value and over 10x Facebook’s 2013 offer.
While last year’s acquistion might not have went through, Alphabet’s CapitalG late stage investment firm did participate in Snap’s Series F funding round that valued the company at $20 billion
CEO Evan Spiegel has a fiercely independent streak so the likelihood of a sale is low. However, the two companies are close partners with Snapchat being a major Google Cloud customer. Snap also internally uses Google’s app suite.
The deal would also make sense in terms of monetizing Snap’s very lucrative business with Google’s ad know-how.
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