Microsoft reportedly held talks in recent months to acquire the $51-billion social media firm Pinterest, as per the report. The decision of Microsoft comes as the company is making conscious efforts to further expand its social media presence.
As per The Financial Times, the tech giant aimed to acquire Pinterest, a platform popular for sharing and discovering recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas, to create a portfolio of active online communities that could run on its Cloud computing platform.
Both Microsoft and Pinterest declined to comment on the report. Pinterest, whose market value increased more than 600 per cent during the pandemic, plans to remain an independent company. Microsoft earlier made an attempt to acquire TikTok but the deal did not materialise.
Pinterest reported strong fourth quarter financial results last week, with $706 million in revenue. The company’s US revenue jumped 67 per cent (year over year) to $582 million while its international revenue was up 145 per cent year over year to $123 million. Pinterest said its international user base expanded 46 per cent to 361 million.
Microsoft has acquired some significant companies under CEO Satya Nadella, like LinkedIn for $26 billion and open source code repository GitHub for $7.5 billion.
Microsoft also acquired private gaming company ZeniMax media for $7.5 billion last year. It is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the largest privately-held game developers and publishers in the world. The decision as the gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $200 billion in annual revenue in 2021.
