Tue. 03/18 – The Big M&A Test I Was Waiting For

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🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

We get that first big test of M&A I was looking for as Alphabet acquires Wiz. Is Roku going to force us to watch ads just to turn on our TVs? The AI coding assistant space continues to be hot. The breakthrough in electric vehicle charging that could really change the game. And what exactly does Lumon Industries do?

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Links:

Google Strikes $32 Billion Deal for Cybersecurity Startup Wiz (WSJ)
“Awful”: Roku tests autoplaying ads loading before the home screen (Ars Technica)
Critical RCE flaw in Apache Tomcat actively exploited in attacks (Bleeping Computer)
Cognition AI Hits $4 Billion Valuation in Deal Led by Lonsdale’s Firm (Bloomberg)
BYD Shares Jump to Record on Five-Minute EV Battery Charging (Bloomberg)
They Named Their Companies Lumon. Then ‘Severance’ Aired. (WSJ)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the TechMean right home for Tuesday, March 18th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today.
0:08.5	We get that first big test of M&A I was looking for as Alphabet Acquires Wiz.
0:13.4	Is Roku going to force us to watch ads just to turn on our TVs?
0:18.2	The AI coding assistance space continues to be hot.
0:20.6	The breakthrough and electric
0:21.5	vehicle charging that could really change the game, and what exactly does Lumen Industries do?
0:26.3	Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.
0:32.6	When I said to Chris Messina on a bonus episode that we needed a test case of M&A activity in this new
0:38.3	regulatory era, this was basically exactly what I was talking about. Alphabet has agreed to
0:44.0	buy cybersecurity startup WIS for at least $32 billion and will announce the deal today.
0:50.1	Alphabet was close to a $23 billion deal for WIS last summer before talks ended, in part because of
0:56.0	concerns that regulators wouldn't allow the deal to go through. So again, this is what I was
1:00.1	looking for, a big deal to test the waters, quoting the journal from a previous article speculating
1:05.0	that the deal was about to happen. The previous talks fell apart as WIS and some of its investors
1:10.3	had concerns about the time it would
1:12.2	take for a deal to clear regulatory hurdles, among other issues. Bankers and CEOs came into the year
1:18.2	hoping for big deals, but market volatility and Washington turmoil have sapped confidence. Google moving
1:23.2	to strike its biggest deal ever, and one of the biggest deals of the year would be a test of
1:26.7	the Trump administration's antitrust appetite and a barometer for other tech deals.
1:30.9	Whiz, which offers cybersecurity software for cloud computing, is based in New York with additional
1:34.8	offices in the U.S. and Israel. The startup partners with a number of the biggest cloud companies,
1:39.5	including Amazon and Microsoft, as well as Google, according to its website. An acquisition
	...

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