X (formerly Twitter) Acquisition, Valuation, Funding & Investors

Strive Inc is a structured finance company and institutional asset manager focused on disciplined capital allocation and long term value creation. The company has adopted bitcoin as its hurdle rate for capital deployment because of its fiduciary duty to maximize long-term value for stockholders, and compounding purchasing power over time. It operates in two reportable operating segments: the Asset Management segment, which provides investment advisory services and the Corporate & Other segment, which includes the company's bitcoin treasury operations. The majority of the revenue is derived from the Asset Management segment.

Freechat is a decentralized social network on blockchain with DID verification, NFT integration, and AI-driven content recommendations via machine learning. Users post updates, join communities, play games, and make encrypted payments in crypto. Freechat's platform hosts UGC, smart contract ads, and privacy tools across distributed ledgers for global access.

Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging platform supporting text, voice, video calls, file sharing up to 2GB, and channels for broadcasts to unlimited subscribers. Available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, it offers end-to-end encrypted Secret Chats, self-destructing messages, and bot APIs for automation. Telegram operates servers in multiple data centers worldwide, serving users across 200 countries with synchronization across unlimited devices.

Publicis Groupe is a French communications group headquartered in Paris and listed on Euronext Paris. Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet founded it in 1926, and it has grown into one of the largest advertising and communications groups in the world. The group provides creative, media planning and buying, digital marketing, data and public relations services to corporate clients through networks such as Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett, Zenith, Starcom and Performics. It operates in more than 100 countries and employs over 100,000 people. In the Czech Republic it ran its agencies through a holding co-owned with local co-founder Martin Stepanek from 1995 until it took full control of that holding in 2016. Revenue comes from fees and commissions on client campaigns and media spend.

Omnicom is a holding company that owns several advertising agencies and related firms. It provides traditional and digital advertising services that include creative design, market research, data analytics, ad placement, and public relations. The firm operates globally, providing services in more than 70 countries; it generates more than one half of its revenue in North America and nearly 30% in Europe.

LY is a leading Japanese internet services conglomerate. Its main services are Yahoo Japan, the oldest portal site in Japan that offers a wide variety of services, such as news, e-commerce, financial information, and Line, a national messenger application. In 2019, the company acquired Zozo, a leading online apparel retailer, to grow its e-commerce business. In 2022, LY consolidated with its wholly owned subsidiary PayPay, the most popular QR code payment service in Japan.

Authentic Brands Group is an American brand development, marketing and licensing company headquartered in New York City. It owns more than 50 consumer brands, including Reebok, Brooks Brothers, Champion, Nautica, Nine West, Quiksilver, Billabong, Juicy Couture, Sperry, Dockers and Guess, and the likeness rights or estates of figures such as Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Authentic licenses these brands to more than 1,700 licensees and partners in over 150 countries, whose products sell through more than 31,000 stores and shop-in-shops and generate over $38 billion in annual systemwide retail sales. It also runs content and live-experience businesses, including Sports Illustrated's intellectual property and Authentic Live, launched in 2025. The company was founded in 2010 by Canadian entrepreneur Jamie Salter with backing from Leonard Green & Partners, and grew through deals such as Reebok from Adidas for at least $2.5 billion and Champion from Hanesbrands for $1.2 billion in 2024. CVC Capital Partners and HPS Investment Partners invested $3.5 billion in 2021 at a $12.7 billion company value, and its owners also include Leonard Green and General Atlantic. Matt Maddox became chief executive in May 2026, with Salter as executive chairman.

Naver has been the leading search portal in South Korea for many years. The company has also been evolving into an internet platform providing a variety of internet services, such as news, a dictionary, maps, digital comic content, social networking, e-commerce, videos, fintech services based on online payments, and Cloud services. Naver was also the incubator of Line Yahoo, the leading mobile messaging app in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia, which merged with Z Holdings (Yahoo Japan), with Naver now owning 32.5% of the merged entity renamed LY.

Reddit is a social media platform where users can engage in conversations, explore, and create communities centered around their interests. Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit has evolved into a vast network of user-generated content organized into specialized forums known as "subreddits." The platform's unique community-driven model relies on volunteer moderators to manage content and maintain subreddit guidelines. Reddit generates revenue primarily through advertising and data licensing agreements.

Xiaohongshu is a Shanghai-headquartered content-sharing platform founded in 2013. Community members post lifestyle experiences in fashion, beauty, travel, and shopping via text, images, and videos in a note-based format. Evolved from a guide for overseas shopping assistance into a comprehensive hub for product insights and recommendations with integrated e-commerce capabilities.

Discord is a voice, video, and text communication platform originally built for gamers, now serving communities in music, education, and hobbies. The service supports servers with channels, screen sharing, and mobile apps. San Francisco-headquartered Discord, launched in 2015, hosts millions of daily active users worldwide.

Kuaishou Technology is a social media platform where users create, watch, and share short-form videos. Approximately half of the company’s revenue comes from advertising. Additionally, Kuaishou generates revenue through livestreaming, where fans purchase virtual gifts to tip hosts. The platform also features livestreaming e-commerce, enabling users to buy products showcased in videos, with Kuaishou earning a commission on each transaction. Kuaishou’s primary competitors are ByteDance’s Douyin and Tencent’s Video Accounts. Notably, Tencent owns a 16% stake in Kuaishou.

Focus Media Information Technology Co Ltd is an advertising company. The company's main business is the development and operation of Life Circle media. Its main products are building media (including elevator TV media and elevator poster media) and cinema screen advertising media, etc., covering the work scenes, life scenes, entertainment scenes, and consumption scenes of the mainstream urban consumer groups, and integrating into a life circle media network.

Pinterest is a social media platform with a focus on product and idea discovery. Pinterest users, or pinners, can leverage the platform as they go about gathering ideas on topics such as home improvement, fashion, cooking, and travel. The company has more than 500 million monthly active users, two thirds of whom are female. Pinterest generates revenue by selling digital ads on its platform. While the platform’s user base spans the globe, the vast majority of its revenue stems from ads shown to North American users.

Kakao Corp is a technology and platform company engaged in digital services, content, mobility, and financial technology businesses. The company operates through seven reportable segments. The Kakao segment provides advertising and platform-based service offerings. The Kakao Games segment covers game development, publishing, and related services. The Kakao Entertainment segment focuses on entertainment planning and content production, and distribution. Kakao Mobility offers database-based information provision services, while Kakao Pay provides mobile platform-based financial services. Kakao Piccoma operates a platform for webtoon and web-novel supply, and the SM Entertainment segment engages in entertainment planning and content production.

Match Group Inc is a provider of online dating products. The company's portfolio of brands includes Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Pairs, Plenty Of Fish, Azar, BLK, and more, each built to increase its user's likelihood of connecting with others. The company has four operating segments: Tinder, Hinge, Evergreen and Emerging, and Match Group Asia. The company generates the majority of its revenue from the Tinder segment.

Snap Inc. is a publicly listed United States technology company founded in 2012 and headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Its principal product is Snapchat, a visual messaging and social-media application supported mainly by advertising revenue. The company also develops augmented-reality software, camera technology and Spectacles hardware. Snap launched the Yellow Accelerator in 2018 as an in-house programme for creative and technology startups. Selected companies received capital, mentorship and access to Snap teams, and the programme invested USD 150,000 in each company in the reviewed cohorts. Those accelerator investments belong to Snap Inc., not to the unrelated Spanish venture fund that adopted the Yellow name in 2023. Snap remains a separate public operating company and the correct participant for the 26 pre-2023 rows in this packet.

Kakao Japan, renamed Kakao Piccoma Corporation in November 2021, is the Tokyo-based Japanese subsidiary of South Korea's Kakao that operates Piccoma, a digital manga and webtoon platform. The company was established in 2011 to promote Kakao's messaging services in Japan and launched Piccoma in April 2016 for smartphones, tablets and personal computers. Piccoma sells individual chapters of Japanese manga and translated Korean webtoons from Kakao's content businesses, and lets readers unlock some chapters free after waiting 24 hours; it earns revenue mainly from paid chapter purchases. Piccoma has been the top-grossing comic app in Japan since July 2020, and in May 2021 the company raised about KRW 600 billion from Anchor Equity Partners and overseas sovereign wealth funds at a valuation of about KRW 8.8 trillion. Kakao remains the controlling shareholder, with Kakao Entertainment holding a further stake. The company opened a French-language Piccoma service in Europe but closed it in September 2024 to concentrate on Japan.