In what seemed like out of the blue yesterday, Vizio got acquired for $2 billion by a Chinese company called LeEco. The deal includes all of Vizio’s technology and intellectual property – save for Vizio’s Inscape data services (collects viewing behavior from content played on their TVs). This will spinoff into its own privately-owned company in which Vizio founder William Wang will own majority stake in and the remainder gets licensed to LeEco for a 10-year period.
Don’t expect any changes to the TV company as it will live on under the same name but now as a subsidiary of LeEco. They plan to invest heavily into Vizio’s R&D as the Chinese company has the $$$ and the experience as they make a little bit of everything: from Android smartphones to TVs to bikes and more. Not too shabby for a TV company that penetrated the market w/ affordable but still high-end quality TVs.
Since we’re already at 2 acquisitions for the week, there’s still time for a 3rd.
