Meta (NASDAQ: META) is a publicly listed company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States that owns 6 consumer brands, and has 4 recorded transactions.[1]
Meta was called Facebook until 2021, when it renamed itself after the virtual worlds it was then betting on. It owns four of the most used communication services in the world, and American regulators spent years arguing in court that two of those were bought specifically to remove competitors.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
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Meta acquired Giphy for a reported $315 million without notifying the British competition regulator in advance, which it was not required to do. The Competition and Markets Authority opened an inquiry after the fact and ultimately ordered the acquisition unwound.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion in cash and stock, the largest sum ever paid for a venture-backed company at the time. The European Commission cleared the deal in October 2014.
Facebook acquired Instagram, then a thirteen-person company with no revenue, for about $1 billion in cash and stock. The final consideration fell as Facebook shares declined between announcement and closing.
Meta sold Giphy to Shutterstock for a reported $53 million, about a sixth of what it had paid three years earlier, to comply with the divestiture ordered by the Competition and Markets Authority.
Meta controlled this brand in the past. Each row shows when the ownership ended and who holds the brand now, so a page that once said Meta owned it still shows why it no longer does.
| Brand | Owned until | Owner today |
|---|---|---|
| GIPHY | May 2023 | Shutterstock |
| Case | Regulator | Decision | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook, Inc (now Meta Platforms, Inc) / Giphy, Inc | cma | cleared with remedies | 18 October 2022 |
| Facebook / Instagram Inc | cma | cleared | 14 August 2012 |
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Meta owns 6 consumer brands tracked here, including Instagram, Meta Quest, Threads, WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger.
Yes. Meta is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States and was founded in 2004.
Meta is a publicly listed company owned by its shareholders; it trades as META on the NASDAQ.
The most recent completed acquisition recorded here is GIPHY on 15 May 2020.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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