You probably know Razer best for making high-end gaming peripherals. They've become synonymous with quality, tournament-ready gear. What you probably didn't expect to find out today was that this gaming company has just purchased THX... yes, the same THX that pops up at the beginning of movies.
Tech Crunch is reporting that Razer has acquired the high-tech media company consisting of 50 employees -- who span the gamut of graphics designers, sound engineers, and scientists -- in order to turn it into an emergent start-up.
They don't mention what price they paid for it, but Tech Crunch estimated that THX was worth around $13 million back in 2002 and asked if that was what Razer paid for it, however, Razer's CEO, Min-Liang Tan, has said that "2002 is not today". This could be taken in one of two ways: that inflation has caused the price of THX to rise from what it was more than a decade ago, in which case the $13 million will have jumped up to $17 million or possibly something closer to $20 million, depending on the market valuation, or he's implying that the company's worth has shrunk since 2002 and that they did not pay more $13 million for THX from LucasArts.
And yes, in case you didn't know... THX was created by LucasArts and has been in use across a wide variety of movies since 1983.
I'm sure some of you are wondering how a company like Razer even raises or has the capital to make a purchase of a prestigious tech subsidiary like THX. Well, the reality is that Tech Crunch has reported that Razer is valued at over $1.5 billion and has recently disclosed $125 million in funding from various other larger corporations, such as Intel and Accel.
Razer appears to be jockeying for market position and making big moves to further their end-game... whatever that may be. They've added THX to their new collection of start-ups, which also includes Ouya, who they purchased back in 2015.
They plan on using THX to further develop new technologies and spread said technologies across global markets. Their first aim seems to be sticking with improving the audio/visual quality of films and they're hoping to ride the wave of China's booming market to major success. Given the pivotal role that China is beginning to play in film import/export and the crossover market that it shares with Hollywood, maybe this is a pretty wise purchase for Razer after all.
It's still kind of mind-blowing because of all the companies out there to purchase a recognized and prestigious brand like THX, I never would have guessed that Razer would have been one of them. Heck, Intel, Cisco or even Microsoft would have been higher up on the list -- especially Microsoft, given their penchant for wanting to move into the multimedia field for creating emergent brands that have a fluid reach across multiple demographics and market types.
Anyway, Razer is supposedly continuing to look into more purchases and THX will continue to develop their business as usual. Razer plans on tapping into THX's IP library for improving their own gaming products, while this also opens the door for THX to dip their toes into the VR and gaming market.
