On April 18, according to foreign media reports, chip giant Intel is acquiring mashery, a seven-year-old San Francisco based company focusing on the integration of network-based software and services. The deal has been confirmed to the media by a spokesman for mashery.
Mashery has 125 employees. Last night, they got the news that the company would be acquired by sending an email to all employees of the company. The acquisition is expected to take place in the second quarter and Intel hopes to offer jobs to most of mashery's employees after the completion of the acquisition. Mashery's location will remain where it was, so it will join Intel's two-year-old Services Division. Details of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but it will not have a significant impact on Intel's financial performance.
The impact of the acquisition on Intel is significant, indicating that Intel has realized that the CPU is no longer just a silicon chip, but a network.
Mashery focuses on managing the application interface (API), which is an Internet language through which machines communicate with each other according to preset rules. For example, the Facebook platform has expanded its social functions through a series of APIs. With API, foursquare can let other applications use its location database and other functions. Comcast uses mashery's API management service to allow programmers to access the company's internal system.
For small companies, they find it difficult to build systems that allow developers to access these software interfaces. However, large enterprises are generally reluctant to establish their own API management system. As a result, for mashery, the business scale in this area has become larger and larger recently.
Intel is transforming from a company that only sells chips to a company that sells software and services. Although this transformation has attracted little business attention, this strategy has been implemented for a long time. Intel's $7.7 billion acquisition of McAfee in 2010 brought it into the security software business. In 2005, Intel acquired sarvega, a small company whose business focuses on XML gateway technology.
Intel first cooperated with mashery in November 2012 to integrate its security products with mashery's API management tools. By acquiring mashery, Intel will have more complete and reliable products in cloud computing infrastructure. Because most cloud software services communicate with other services through API.
Mashery has raised a total of $35 million from investors, most recently last year, when it raised $10 million, making the company valued at $60 million. The acquisition will not have a significant impact on Intel's financial performance, but industry insiders said Intel's acquisition price may be two to three times the latest valuation of mashery, that is, the acquisition price is expected to be $120 million to $180 million. However, a mashery spokesman declined to comment on the financial details of the acquisition.