Paul Jacobs, the former CEO of Qualcomm, has dropped plans to make a takeover bid for the company founded by his father. He told the Wall Street Journal that Qualcomm's valuation was no longer attractive to take it private.
Jacobs had begun gathering financing but decided late last year that Qualcomm was too expensive relative to its earnings. Its current market capitalization is USD 68 billion. "As Qualcomm’s position changed, the conditions weren’t right to take it private," Jacobs said.
Instead, he is focused on his new company Xcom. Xcom has a staff of about 30 people that is set to grow by a further 20 after the company closed a deal in March to buy M87, a Seattle-based startup. Xcom raised additional funds to complete that transaction and finance future operations, on top of what Jacobs and other investors provided at startup.
M87 uses software to extend the range of phones that have trouble connecting to cell towers by routing calls and data usage from one person’s device to another’s, as far as 100 meters away. That way, a person deep inside a building who has no reception could piggyback off someone closer to the signal who might have a connection. Xcom said such a transfer improves connectivity while using only as much as 1 percent of the borrowed device’s battery life in an hour.
