The detail about using the investment fund to gain influence on the board is particularly interesting. This tactic is also used by other FAANGs as a way to evaluate (and exfiltrate) value in potential acquisitions.
Microsoft themselves seem to have fallen into a never ending extreme scale build vs buy argument beloved of current dev culture, which wants to build just enough internally to make negotiations interesting but then just use capital muscle to buy the real thing, which they will then mismanage to destruction, requiring more, and repeat. This disturbing tendency has infested so much of US business it is why I don’t see the whole manufacturing onshoring working, as who wants to do something when you can just own it?
Microsoft themselves seem to have fallen into a never ending extreme scale build vs buy argument beloved of current dev culture, which wants to build just enough internally to make negotiations interesting but then just use capital muscle to buy the real thing, which they will then mismanage to destruction, requiring more, and repeat. This disturbing tendency has infested so much of US business it is why I don’t see the whole manufacturing onshoring working, as who wants to do something when you can just own it?