I'm sure the tech was part of it, but my guess is that they were mostly buying it for the ready made team. I think this is pretty similar to the Monsanto acqui

I'm sure the tech was part of it, but my guess is that they were mostly buying it for the ready made team. I think this is pretty similar to the Monsanto acquisition of Climate Corporation (where I worked) several years ago. If you're a big traditional company, building an innovative technology team from scratch is really hard, even if you're willing to spend a lot of money on it. It takes a lot of time and effort, and you probably don't have the internal leaders or culture to attract top talent. Buying a promising startup and continuing to operate it as an independent organization is a straightforward (if expensive) way to solve this bootstrapping problem. From a strategic perspective, it can make complete sense if the opportunity cost of getting a product to market a year or two late can be measured in billions of dollars. There are a lot of advantages to being first to market.