Following numerous acquisition rumors, 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Company, the majority owners of Hulu, have decided not to sell the streaming company and will instead invest an additional $750 million in it “to propel future growth.”
Recently, everyone from Yahoo and DirectTV to private equity firms KKR and Silver Lake were reportedly eyeing Hulu as an acquisition target. How these new funds will be utilized has not yet been disclosed.
21st Century Fox President and COO Chase Carey revealed that Hulu’s owners indeed had “meaningful conversations with a number of potential partners and buyers.” He called the offers Hulu received “impressive.”
According to Walt Disney Company CEO Robert A. Iger, “Disney and its partners are committing resources to enable Hulu to achieve its maximum potential.”
We have reached out to representatives from Disney, NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox in regards to this news and have yet to hear back. We will update this story when we do.
Update: When asked by Bloomberg how the $750 million will be spent, Disney’s Iger says Hulu plans to invest in “people, technology and content.”
The success of Hulu has been, a large result, of real talent, the technology platform that created it, including the user interface, and of course of the content that was available. We believe that by continuing to attract great people…and making sure that we’ve got great technology that includes a very fine user interface and then investing in content that people want, that this thing could really turn out to be something big.
Image credit: Thinkstock
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