Online dating platform Match Group agreed to acquire South Korea-based online communication technology provider Hyperconnect for roughly $1.73bn. The transaction, which involves both cash and stock, would give telecommunications and internet conglomerate SoftBank an exit. The latter had committed capital to the company in its $8.6m series A round almost six years ago.
Launched in 2014, Hyperconnect runs a one-on-one video and audio chatting app dubbed Azar, which has been downloaded more than 540 million times, as well as Hakuna Live, a group livestreaming app featuring augmented reality avatars. The latter has been downloaded more than 23 million times. The company claims to have reached profitability, after generating more than $200m in revenue during 2020.
Hyperconnect is part of the broader social media and instant messaging space, which has seen much attention from corporate venture investors, as the GCV Analytics bar chart below illustrates. Interestingly, enough the number of corporate-backed deals reached a record high at 57 rounds in 2020, while the total estimated dollars in those rounds stood at a surprising minimum of $253m. This does not necessarily suggest, however, a drop in valuations, as many of the tracked deals in recent years have been in very early-stage companies and often of undisclosed size.
