Internet company Yahoo has entered talks to acquire Foursquare, the US-based services search app backed by software company Microsoft and media company O’Reilly Media, for about $900m, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
Founded in 2009, Foursquare operates a search, discovery and recommendation app for local services. Its key feature was a tool that enabled users to publicly ‘check in’ to a place they had visited using their mobile device, though the feature was spun off into a separate app called Swarm in May 2014.
TechCrunch’s story cites an undisclosed source who told it the “deal is done,” as well as additional unnamed sources, though others, including sources that spoke to Re/Code, have stated that no such talks have taken place.
Foursquare has raised approximately $189m in debt and equity, according to company announcements and SEC filings, most recently securing $15m from Microsoft in February 2014 as part of a licensing deal, taking its series D round to $77.1m, according to a regulatory filing.
O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of O’Reilly Media, invested in Foursquare’s 2009 seed round, a $20m round the following year, and a $50m series C round in 2011 that valued it at $600m.
Other investors in the company include Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, DFJ Growth, Smallcap World Fund, Silver Lake Waterman and assorted angel investors.
TechCrunch has speculated that Yahoo’s prospective interest in Foursquare could be linked to its own ongoing negotiations with Microsoft over extending a licensing deal for the technology that powers Yahoo’s search engine.
Should negotiations falter, Yahoo would benefit from Foursquare’s extensive and detailed location-based data, as well as the technology to power it, which could then be brought under its control. Even if this does not happen, Yahoo’s search capabilities would still be greatly bolstered by the deal.