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Google’s parent company Alphabet has been seeking advice and exploring its options to purchase the marketing software company HubSpot, valued at $35 billion.
Speaking to Reuters, anonymous sources familiar with the situation revealed that Alphabet has met with Morgan Stanley investment bankers for advice on how much to offer and to discuss the possibility that antitrust regulators would permit such a purchase.
If the purchase were to go ahead, it would be Alphabet’s biggest acquisition to date. The tech giant is currently sitting on cash reserves of over $110 billion so it is likely keen to make use of this. Despite the reserves, Google still laid off hundreds of employees earlier this year.
No official offer has been made yet and both Google and Morgan Stanley have not made comments on the issue. A HubSpot spokesperson said: “As standard practice, HubSpot does not comment on rumors or speculation. We continue to focus on building a great business and serving our customers.”
Alphabet has a history with antitrust regulations
If this acquisition goes ahead, it could prove beneficial for both parties. Alphabet would gain access to HubSpot’s marketing and client relationship manager (CRM) software, allowing it to tap into the pool of enterprise customers who passed up Google’s offerings for something with these capabilities. HubSpot would gain access to Google’s expanding artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, which it hopes to expand into its advertising offering.
The question remains – will antitrust regulators allow such an acquisition to occur, especially while Google is currently embroiled in court over an antitrust suit brought by news media publisher Gannett Co. Google was also sued in 2023 by the US Justice Department over its stranglehold on digital advertising technologies, asserting that its serial acquisitions were a big part of why they were able to gain a monopoly.
Regulators in the US are on high alert for Google’s movements in order to stamp down any building monopolies before they can form so this deal would have to be handled extremely carefully if it did happen. As of yet, there’s no official news and it might just be a case of Google exploring its options in the market.
Featured image: Alphabet
