After almost two years, Microsoft has finally closed the $68.7 billion deal and acquired Activision Blizzard. Confirmed by Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, the deal comes after the final approval from UK's Competition and Markets earlier today. The acquisition puts Activision Blizzard, developers Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, Toys for Bob, Beenox and High Moon Studios, as well as the mobile game maker King, which is known for its Candy Crush game, all under Xbox Game Studios.

In case you missed it, Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard back in January 2022, after which it started its battle with various regulators, including UK's CMA, the European Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission, and others. In its extensive statement, Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, once again confirmed that they will continue to make more games available in more places, as it promised to the European Commission, and they can now start the work to bring all those franchises to Game Pass and other platforms. Earlier this week, Activision Blizzard confirmed it expected to start adding titles to Game Pass in 2024, if the aforementioned deal goes through.

Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) today announced that it has mutually agreed with Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM) to terminate its previously disclosed agreement to acquire Tower due to the inability to obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement, dated Feb. 15, 2022. In accordance with the terms of the merger agreement and in connection with its termination, Intel will pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower.

"Our foundry efforts are critical to unlocking the full potential of IDM 2.0, and we continue to drive forward on all facets of our strategy," said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. "We are executing well on our roadmap to regain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025, building momentum with customers and the broader ecosystem and investing to deliver the geographically diverse and resilient manufacturing footprint the world needs. Our respect for Tower has only grown through this process, and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future."

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion", the "Company" or "we") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023. For the second quarter of 2023, net sales (GAAP) increased sequentially to $140.4 million from $124.1 million in the first quarter of 2023. Net income (GAAP) increased to $11.0 million, or $0.33 per diluted American Depositary Share of the Company ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $10.2 million, or $0.30 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the first quarter of 2023.

For the second quarter of 2023, net income (non-GAAP) increased to $12.6 million, or $0.38 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $11.2 million, or $0.33 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the first quarter of 2023.

In a surprise move, Maxlinear has cancelled its close to US$4 billion takeover of Silicon Motion, despite having received approval by China to finally acquire Silicon Motion. The two companies started their merger back in May of 2022, but over a year later, Maxlinear has announced that it has "exercised its contractual rights to terminate its May 5, 2022 merger agreement". The announcement saw a drop in Maxlinear's shares of about 12 percent and a 25 percent drop for Silicon Motion.

It's unclear as to why Maxlinear cancelled the deal, but the two companies don't appear to have clear synergies outside some storage products. That said, Maxlinear appears to blame Silicon Motion in a press release that the company issues. Among other things, Maxlinear states that "Silicon Motion has suffered a Material Adverse Effect that is continuing, Silicon Motion is in material breach of representations, warranties, covenants, and agreements in the Merger Agreement that give rise to the right of the Company to terminate". As to what this actually means, we'll most likely never find out, but as Maxlinear also points out, the merger was supposed to have been finished by the 23rd of May 2023, which means Maxlinear had the right to cancel the merger regardless.

Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka stated earlier today: "Dear Gamers, I want to share some really exciting news that will mark the start of a new chapter of Techland's history. Techland has been a huge part of my life for more than 30 years now and it is something I truly cherish. Techland is our games, the amazing team behind them, and you, the people playing these games. You're the reason why we're making them. Whenever I think about the future of Techland, I want the best for our games, the team, and you. And while I am very proud of our achievements as an independent studio over all these years, I believe the best is yet to come.

We dream of turning Dying Light into the ultimate zombie game experience for players worldwide, providing you with multiple astonishing adventures and pushing the boundaries of solo and online modes to a totally new level. Our open world action-RPG in a fantasy setting is already shaping up to become something truly special, and the goal here is to make sure it will live up to the expectations for our first new IP in almost a decade. Can we make these dreams come true? Yes, we can. But what we realized is that the best, boldest dreams can only be achieved while working side-by-side with like-minded friends and strong partners, who share the same vision, passion, and have the willingness to back it up with their knowledge, experience, and capabilities.

Dell Technologies announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Moogsoft, an AI-driven provider of intelligent monitoring solutions that support DevOps and ITOps. This transaction will further enhance Dell's AIOps capabilities, as part of its longstanding approach of embedding AI functionality within its product portfolio and as a critical component of its "multicloud by design" strategy. The transaction is expected to close in Q3. Additional details will be available at that time.

About Moogsoft
Moogsoft is the AI-driven observability leader that provides intelligent monitoring solutions for smart DevOps. Moogsoft delivers the most advanced cloud-native, self-service platform for software engineers, developers, and operators to instantly see everything, know what's wrong and fix things faster. Founded in 2012, Moogsoft has more than 140 customers worldwide including American Airlines, Fannie Mae, Fiserv, HCL Technologies, SAP SuccessFactors, and Verizon Media. It has established strategic partnerships with leading managed service providers and outsourcing organizations including AWS, Cisco, HCL Technologies, TCS and Wipro.

You may have noticed CORSAIR's press release yesterday concerning its acquisition of Drop, a popular enthusiast peripherals website that made its name for running group buys before focusing on keyboards. DIY keyboard components, and audio products. The press release was careful in talking primarily about the keyboard side of things and we noticed an omission of anything non-keyboard related, thus necessitating a follow-up from CORSAIR on behalf of audiophiles who are fans of highly popular Drop products such as the Drop x Sennheiser HD 6XX, its gaming headsets with EPOS, multiple other headphone collaborations with manufacturers including Dan Clark Audio, HIFIMAN, Focal, as well as various amplifiers/DACs/streamers. There was speculation about whether CORSAIR had only purchased the keyboard assets and that the audio aspects might not continue, but CORSAIR was quick to confirm otherwise.

In a quote provided to TechPowerUp, CORSAIR mentioned the following:

I can confirm that CORSAIR has acquired the Drop.com website, brand, business, community, and all its staff. Drop.com will continue to operate via its own website. While we expect to explore wider opportunities for selling Drop products via the Corsair global sales channel, the drop.com website will remain distinct from Corsair, in a similar fashion to SCUF, Elgato and Origin PC. We'll be evaluating the non-keyboard aspects of the business as time goes on but will be making no changes immediately.

The European Commission has today announced that it has granted conditional approval—under EU Merger Regulation—for the $61 billion acquisition of VMware by Broadcom: "The approval is conditional upon full compliance with the commitments offered by Broadcom. Today's decision follows an in-depth investigation of the proposed acquisition. Broadcom is a hardware company that offers, among other products, Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters ('FC HBAs'), storage adapters and Network Interface Cards ('NICs'), which are hardware components that connect servers to storage or network. Broadcom has recently started expanding into software markets, mainly for security and mainframe applications. VMware is a software supplier offering mainly virtualization software that interoperates with a wide range of hardware, including FC HBAs, storage adapters and NICs.

A company spokesperson commented on the EU administration's conditional approval of the deal: "Broadcom provided the European Commission with a technology access remedy that preserves interoperability, a core principle that would not have changed as a result of this transaction...Broadcom did this to fully address the concerns expressed by the European Commission, and Broadcom welcomes the Commission's decision to accept this access remedy." The aforementioned "concerns" relate to the acquisition resulting in a possible restriction of "competition in the market for certain hardware components which interoperate with VMware's software." Broadcom is aiming to finalize their purchase of VMware by November 1, but they have to contend with forthcoming judgements from US and UK regulators prior to that date.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an injunction earlier this week, in a renewed effort to temporarily block Microsoft's $69 billion bid for full ownership of the Activision Blizzard group. A judge has today granted the regulatory body's request. The court has issued a temporary restraining order—in which it states the legal measure "is necessary to maintain the status quo while the complaint is pending." The FTC proposes that the acquisition has the potential to "substantially lessen competition" within North America's gaming sector. Microsoft and Activision are required to attend a two-day hearing—scheduled for 22 June in San Francisco, California.

The FTC had previously penciled in an August 2 session with an internal administrative judge, following the expiration of Microsoft's proposed deadline (July 18) for the merger. A company spokesperson (commenting to Eurogamer) expressed that leadership was happy about the FTC's decision to bring proceedings forward in time: "Accelerating the legal process in the US will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the gaming market. A temporary restraining order makes sense until we can receive a decision from the Court, which is moving swiftly." The legal document outlines terms including the prevention of "any of their officers, directors, domestic or foreign agents, divisions, subsidiaries, affiliates, partnerships, or joint ventures from closing or consummating, directly or indirectly, the proposed transaction or a substantially similar transaction."

Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard has been approved by EU regulators today - rumors emerged late last week that the bloc's executive arm, the European Commission, would give the takeover bid a thumbs up this week, with early indications that May 15 would be the day of declaration. EU antitrust regulators have let the acquisition pass due to commitments/reassurances from Microsoft relating to the cloud gaming sector. This is in sharp contrast to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) organization's judgment, who chose to block the deal in late April and have since added restrictions (as of late last week) via a new interim order.

EU antitrust regulators have found that Microsoft "would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision's games to Sony" and that "even if Microsoft did decide to withdraw Activision's games from the PlayStation, this would not significantly harm competition in the home gaming console market." But the European Union's competition regulators have found points of concern (much like the UK CMA's further investigations) and reckon that the segment could be disrupted in the area of cloud gaming services - on PC and console platforms. The body has received the promise of several remedies from Microsoft - these matters will be resolved through flexible terms - including a free license to consumers in EU countries that will grant stream access to "any cloud game streaming services of their choice" - with the ownership of Activision Blizzard PC and console titles (current and future). Cloud providers operating within EU markets will also be offered a free license to stream the Acti-Blizz library.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion", the "Company" or "we") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2023. For the first quarter of 2023, net sales (GAAP) decreased sequentially to $124.1 million from $200.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Net income (GAAP) decreased to $10.2 million, or $0.30 per diluted American Depositary Share ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $23.5 million, or $0.71 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the fourth quarter of 2022.

For the first quarter of 2023, net income (non-GAAP) decreased to $11.2 million, or $0.33 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $41.1 million, or $1.22 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the fourth quarter of 2022.

KKR, a leading global investment firm, and CoolIT Systems, a leading provider of scalable liquid cooling solutions for the world's most demanding computing environments, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which KKR will acquire CoolIT. The deal, valued at $270 million, will give CoolIT Systems added capital and other resources to scale up to meet growing demand for cooling systems from data-center operators, including giant cloud-computing providers such as Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure cloud unit. CoolIT also works with individual companies running AI applications and other business software in their own data centers.

Founded in 2001, CoolIT designs, engineers and manufactures advanced liquid cooling solutions for the data center and desktop markets. CoolIT's patented Split-Flow Direct Liquid Cooling technology is designed to improve equipment reliability and lifespan, decrease operating cost, lower energy demand and carbon emissions, reduce water consumption and allow for higher server density than legacy air-cooling methods.

"Our business has evolved tremendously over the past few years and today we are proud to be one of the most trusted providers of liquid cooling solutions to the global data center market," said Steve Walton, Chief Executive Officer of CoolIT. "KKR shares our perspective on the significant opportunity ahead for liquid cooling. Having access to KKR's expertise, capital and resources will put us in an even better position to keep scaling, innovating and delivering for our customers."

Bosch is expanding its semiconductor business with silicon carbide chips. The technology company plans to acquire assets of the U.S. chipmaker TSI Semiconductors, based in Roseville, California. With a workforce of 250, the company is a foundry for application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. Currently, it mainly develops and produces large volumes of chips on 200-millimeter silicon wafers for applications in the mobility, telecommunications, energy, and life sciences industries. Over the next years, Bosch intends to invest more than 1.5 billion USD in the Roseville site and convert the TSI Semiconductors manufacturing facilities to state-of-the-art processes. Starting in 2026, the first chips will be produced on 200-millimeter wafers based on the innovative material silicon carbide (SiC).

In this way, Bosch is systematically reinforcing its semiconductor business, and will have significantly extended its global portfolio of SiC chips by the end of 2030. Above all, the global boom and ramp-up of electromobility are resulting in huge demand for such special semiconductors. The full scope of the planned investment will be heavily dependent on federal funding opportunities available via the CHIPS and Science Act as well as economic development opportunities within the State of California. Bosch and TSI Semiconductors have reached an agreement to not to disclose any financial details of the transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval.

Atari - one of the world's most iconic consumer brands and interactive entertainment producers - announced, on April 19, the acquisition of more than 100 PC and console titles from the 1980s and 1990s. The collection includes notable games from the Bubsy, Hardball, Demolition Racer series, as well as the 1942: Pacific Air War, F-117A, and F-14 air combat series. Atari will seek to expand digital and physical distribution of the classic titles, create new games based on the IP, and explore brand and merchandising collaborations.

"This is a deep catalog that includes groundbreaking and award-winning titles from Accolade, Infogrames and Microprose," said Atari CEO Wade Rosen. "Many of these titles are a part of Atari history, and fans can look forward to seeing many of these games re-released in physical and digital formats, and in some cases, even ported to modern consoles." Atari also acquired the trademark to the Accolade and GTI brands. Accolade was a well-respected US-based video game developer and publisher from 1984 until 2000.

Intel's planned purchase of Tower Semiconductor Ltd. has been pushed back by another quarter, as a regulatory decision has not been made by China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Intel announced the $5.4 billion deal in mid-February 2022, and set an estimated 12-month window for its completion. It is now one month overdue, with the first quarter of the financial year set to end next week. Intel is hopeful that it will get full regulatory approval by June 2023.

In light of SAMR not budging since the suspending of its review of the Intel-Tower merger, Intel Israel has issued a response this week: ""While we continue to work to close the Tower transaction within the first quarter of 2023, the transaction may close in the first half of 2023, subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions."

Atari has announced that is buying Nightdive Studios for a cool $10 million - the abandonware specialists will become part of the publisher's larger ambitions to boost production of retro IPs. Nightdive's proprietary KEX engine will form the technological base for future remakes of Atari titles from the archives. As the news of this acquisition hit the web, the Nightdive Twitter posted a positive message regarding the buyout: "This is a big win for our team! As we look to continue producing high-quality, new, and remastered games that do justice to the original IP; we could think of no better long-term partner than."

Nightdive leaders Stephen Kick and Larry Kuperman stated in a joint statement: "Night Dive and Atari have a long history together and we know that Atari shares our passion for retro games and our focus on producing high-quality new and remastered games that do justice to the original IP. As we look to grow our business and expand our capabilities, we could think of no better long-term partner than Atari."

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. For the fourth quarter of 2022, net sales (GAAP) decreased sequentially to $200.8 million from $250.8 million in the third quarter of 2022. Net income (GAAP) decreased to $23.5 million, or $0.71 per diluted American Depositary Share ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $42.9 million, or $1.29 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

For the fourth quarter of 2022, net income (non-GAAP) decreased to $41.1 million, or $1.22 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $51.2 million, or $1.53 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the acquisition of Fungible Inc., a provider of composable infrastructure aimed at accelerating networking and storage performance in datacenters with high-efficiency, low-power data processing units (DPUs). Fungible's technologies help enable high-performance, scalable, disaggregated, scaled-out datacenter infrastructure with reliability and security.

The Fungible team will join Microsoft's datacenter infrastructure engineering teams and will focus on delivering multiple DPU solutions, network innovation and hardware systems advancements.

CHERRY, a globally operating manufacturer of high-end mechanical keyboard switches and computer input devices such as keyboards, mice, and headsets for applications in the worlds of gaming, esports, office and hybrid workplaces, industry, and healthcare, has entered into an agreement to acquire Xtrfy, the Sweden-based gaming peripheral manufacturer known worldwide within the gaming industry for its high-performance, innovative mice, keyboards, headsets and accessories.

Designing pro-level gaming equipment in collaboration with some of the world's most merited gamers, Xtrfy has rapidly grown to become a household name within the esports scene, with products sold in approximately 50 countries. The integration into CHERRY's GAMING business enables Xtrfy to evolve its product development, production and business even further, and will further strengthen CHERRY's position in the gaming devices market as well as enable future growth in the area.

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block technology giant Microsoft Corp. from acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard, Inc. and its blockbuster gaming franchises such as Call of Duty, alleging that the $69 billion deal, Microsoft's largest ever and the largest ever in the video gaming industry, would enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.

In a complaint issued today, the FTC pointed to Microsoft's record of acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles, including its acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks (a well-known game developer). Microsoft decided to make several of Bethesda's titles including Starfield and Redfall Microsoft exclusives despite assurances it had given to European antitrust authorities that it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles.

Microsoft's USD $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard is running into hurdles with competition regulators in both the UK and the EU, with both Brussels and London hinting at a thorough investigation into the impact the acquisition will have on competition in their respective markets. Microsoft is already a game publisher under Microsoft Games Studio, and makes at least two leading gaming platforms—the Xbox and Windows PC; whereas Activision-Blizzard own a constellation of dozens of game developers, and a mountain of IP over some of the most valuable game franchises of all time.

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority has hinted that the acquisition warrants a "second-phase investigation" since it has concerns that the deal would "result in a substantial lessening of competition within a market or markets in the United Kingdom." Over in Brussels, the EU market regulators, too, are taking a closer look at what the deal could entail for European consumers. Sony Computer Entertainment is particularly unhappy with the acquisition, and is the primary source of opposition to the deal that's invoked by regulators. Sony fears that with this acquisition, Microsoft will be in a position to deny popular game franchises such as "Call of Duty" to the PlayStation platform, and will have too much control over whether Sony can deliver an experience comparable or better than that of the Xbox.Many Thanks to DeathtoGnomes for the tip.

Kioxia Holdings Corporation, the world leader in memory solutions, announced today that it completed the acquisition of Chubu Toshiba Engineering Corporation. The company entered into a share purchase agreement with Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation (a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation) on February 24, 2022, in connection with the acquisition to further strengthen Kioxia Group's technology development capabilities.

This acquisition brings in-house a highly experienced engineering team while also enabling cost efficiencies, which together will improve the enterprise value of the company. The acquisition will enhance Kioxia's technology development capabilities, as well as deliver synergies across the design, operation and production of its manufacturing plants.

Elon Musk in a late-Thursday tweet announced that he is placing his Twitter acquisition bid on "temporary hold" over doubts about the platform's spam-bot data. Twitter, in a recent SEC regulatory filing, disclosed that spam bots made up less than 5% of its userbase. The filing revealed that Twitter has 229 million users that viewed consistent ads, while fewer than 5% of the "monetizable daily active users" were fake or spam-bot accounts. Financial analysts predict the substantial fall in cryprocurrency values, as well as a $400 billion drop in market-capitalization of the Tesla stock since Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, may have made the world's richest man squeamish about buying Twitter, and that he is probably looking for a legally safe escape route from the deal. Twitter shares plummeted in value since the Musk tweet.

MaxLinear, Inc. a leading provider of radio frequency (RF), analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband, connectivity, and infrastructure markets, and Silicon Motion, a global leader in NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which MaxLinear will acquire Silicon Motion in a cash and stock transaction that values the combined company at $8 billion in enterprise value. In the merger, each American Depositary Share (ADS) of Silicon Motion, which represents four ordinary shares of Silicon Motion, will receive $93.54 in cash and 0.388 shares of MaxLinear common stock, for total per ADS consideration of $114.34 (based on MaxLinear's May 4, 2022 closing price). The strategic business combination is anticipated to drive transformational scale, create a diversified technology portfolio, significantly expand the combined company's total addressable market, and create a highly profitable cash generating semiconductor leader.

Upon completion of the acquisition, the combined company will have a highly diversified technology platform with strong positions across the broadband, connectivity, infrastructure, and storage end markets. The combination of MaxLinear's RF, analog/mixed-signal, and processing capabilities with Silicon Motion's market leading NAND flash controller technology completes a total technology stack which fully captures end-to-end platform functionality and accelerates the company's expansion into enterprise, consumer, and many other adjacent growth markets. Combined revenues are expected to be more than $2 billion annually and are supported by the technology breadth to address a total market opportunity of roughly $15 billion.

AMD today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Pensando for approximately $1.9 billion before working capital and other adjustments. Pensando's distributed services platform includes a high-performance, fully programmable packet processor and comprehensive software stack that accelerate networking, security, storage and other services for cloud, enterprise and edge applications.

"To build a leading-edge data center with the best performance, security, flexibility and lowest total cost of ownership requires a wide range of compute engines," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD chair and CEO. "All major cloud and OEM customers have adopted EPYC processors to power their data center offerings. Today, with our acquisition of Pensando, we add a leading distributed services platform to our high-performance CPU, GPU, FPGA and adaptive SoC portfolio. The Pensando team brings world-class expertise and a proven track record of innovation at the chip, software and platform level which expands our ability to offer leadership solutions for our cloud, enterprise and edge customers."