Also changing hands: Vision Integrated Graphics, which avoids the word “printer” on its Web site but produces direct mail and other real-word marketing materials for what it describes as “tech-enabled marketing solutions”. They were just acquired by private equity firm H.I.G. Capital. So some smart money thinks print has a future, too.
So far this week, you haven’t been interested in funding or acquisitions, Dear Reader. Let’s try a nice bankruptcy: Catalina, best known for supermarket cash register coupons, filed for Chapter 11 yesterday to erase $1.6 billion of its $1.9 billion debt. The pre-packaged restructuring will let the company focus on digital media and selling its vast trove of consumer data. Catalina is owned by private equity firms Berkshire Partners LLC and Hellman & Friedman LLC.
Finally, we have the headline “Forge.AI Raises $11M to Decode the World’s Unstructured Data” which delightfully suggests a tiny investment could achieve a huge task. Forge.AI uses natural language processing to extract structured information fro data such as news reports, social posts, and financial filings. Not exactly a new idea – which makes their claim even more charming.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.