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GoDaddy receives takeover offer from maker of Norton antivirus software

Talks between web domain provider and Gen Digital at early stage but could allow acquirer to broaden its business beyond cyber security

The maker of Norton 360 antivirus software has made a takeover offer for web domain provider GoDaddy, in a push to broaden its business beyond cyber security and privacy technology.

Talks between Gen Digital and GoDaddy are at an early stage and there are no guarantees that the initial takeover approach will result in a transaction, according to people familiar with the matter. The would-be acquirer’s first offer was made in recent weeks, the people said.

Gen Digital was created by the 2022 merger of NortonLifeLock and Czech rival Avast. The company has become a consolidator of consumer-facing cyber security brands, including computer clean-up software CCleaner, online privacy tool ReputationDefender and identity theft protection provider LifeLock.

For Gen Digital, a swoop for GoDaddy, a company of a relatively similar valuation, would mark a transformational deal, as legacy software companies race to scale up to buttress against the threat from AI to their business models. The exact terms of the offer could not immediately be established.

A tie-up with GoDaddy would combine some of the best-known brands that survived the first wave of the internet. It would give Gen Digital access to GoDaddy’s customer base of more than 20mn small businesses and individuals who use it to register and manage their internet domain names. The company controls about 81mn web domains, about one-fifth of the total registered globally.

GoDaddy shares closed 4.6 per cent higher on Wall Street on Thursday following the FT report, giving the company a market capitalisation of $12.8bn. Gen Digital shares tumbled 12 per cent, giving the group a market value of $13.8bn.

Gen Digital and GoDaddy declined to comment. Both companies are headquartered in Tempe, Arizona.

The talks come at a time of renewed investor interest in old-school internet brands, with Italian software roll-up Bending Spoons, which owns AOL and Vimeo, pulling off a blockbuster listing at a $25.7bn initial valuation at the start of the summer.

Gen Digital has already shown ambitions to pivot away from its core competency of cyber security, having bought fintech lender MoneyLion in a deal valued at $1bn last year.

GoDaddy first emerged during the dotcom boom era. A consortium led by private equity groups Silver Lake Capital Management and KKR took GoDaddy private in 2011, before listing it again on public markets four years later. Last year, GoDaddy reported almost $5bn in revenue. Its share price has fallen 55 per cent from a record high early last year.

GoDaddy is combating investor concerns that AI-powered web-building tools could undercut its business with the rollout of its own Airo.ai platform, which helps users create websites and logos with the assistance of an agent.

Pharma deal fever boosts flurry of highly complex mergers

Concerns over competition and patents add to legal challenges

Deal fever has returned to the pharmaceutical industry as big drugmakers snap up smaller rivals to stave off a looming “patent cliff”, prompting a demand for high-level legal support.

Robert Darwin, partner at law firm Sidley Austin, notes that lawyers perform key functions in M&A deals such as: verifying the condition of assets; helping clients assess, understand and manage regulatory and litigation risks; negotiating and solving problems. The role of an M&A lawyer, he argues, is like an aircraft engineer’s. “It’s just that they ensure deals land smoothly, instead of aircraft.”

Large drugmakers have been spurred on to the acquisition trail by forthcoming patent expiries, a recurring feature in the pharmaceutical industry that allows generic manufacturers to swoop in and produce cheaper versions of top-selling products.

US investment firm Stifel, for instance, estimates that the number of biotechs acquired for at least $1bn in 2026 so far has already surpassed 2025’s record of 35 deals for the whole year.

BioNTech’s acquisition of its smaller rival CureVac was among 2025’s crop of significant deals. The two biotech companies had spent several years duelling in public.

First, it was over which of the German companies would win the race to develop the first mRNA vaccine during the Covid-19 pandemic. BioNTech decisively won that contest in December 2020 as part of a partnership with US giant Pfizer that raked in billions of dollars and helped curb the spread of the virus.

CureVac’s Covid-19 vaccine trial, meanwhile, ended in disappointment, halving the company’s share price on news that its jab failed to reach the cut-off efficacy level needed to secure regulatory approval.

The competition went up a gear two years later when CureVac launched a lawsuit accusing its rival of infringing on its patent in the development of the successful Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer. CureVac said at the time that it was seeking “fair compensation” for what it said was copyright infringement by BioNTech.

So it marked a dramatic shift in their relationship in 2025 when BioNTech and CureVac announced they were joining forces. BioNTech acquired its rival for $1.25bn in an all-stock deal, part of a change in strategy to focus primarily on the development of mRNA therapies for cancer treatment after the threat of the Covid virus receded. CureVac had sold its influenza and Covid-19 vaccine programme to Britain’s GSK in 2024.

The BioNTech-CureVac deal, which took about 12 months to close, was complex. Sibel Yilmaz, a Brussels-based partner at law firm Covington, which advised BioNTech, says her team worked on assessing the feasibility of the deal. Questions included whether there were overlaps between the two companies’ development programmes or technologies that were complementary, either of which could raise competition concerns among regulators.

Both companies had similar mRNA technology and cancer vaccines in development, Yilmaz explains, adding that regulators want to promote competition in a sector and do not like deals that concentrate market power in the hands of a single entity.

Regulators also questioned whether BioNTech was looking to gobble up its competitor because of the lawsuit for copyright infringement.

BioNTech agreed to pay $370mn to CureVac to settle the patent litigation in the US. Yilmaz says GSK’s licensing agreement with CureVac may have helped authorities to become more comfortable with the settlement of the litigation. “Having GSK involved also helped,” Yilmaz says. “[GSK is] not a small company [that] couldn’t say no if they didn’t like it.”

BioNTech was also able to prove, using internal documents, that this was not a deal to pick off a competitor, Yilmaz says, but adds that the process “was very complicated”.

Lawyers were similarly challenged by Merck’s acquisition of US biotech SpringWorks Therapeutics for an equity value of $3.9bn last year. German drugmaker Merck said at the time that the acquisition would help it establish a “leadership position in rare tumours” and help its US expansion goals.

Florian Späth, a Germany-based partner at US firm Sullivan & Cromwell, worked on the deal on behalf of German drugmaker Merck. Early media reports on the deal prompted a sharp increase in the share price of SpringWorks that was beyond the price Merck was offering. As a result of the leaks, Sullivan & Cromwell teams across Germany and the US quickly had to navigate capital market disclosure laws in both countries to comply with transparency requirements for listed companies, Späth explains. The cross-border nature of the transaction also made it more complex.

Legal teams on pharma deals also need to acquire in-depth knowledge of the companies’ drugs and drug pipelines. For example, had Merck’s due diligence team discovered any problems with Nirogacestat, that could have put a spanner in the works. The tumour-treating drug had been approved in the US at the time of the acquisition but not in the EU.

Sullivan & Cromwell had to advise on how to structure the transaction to accommodate the lack of EU approval, and do so in a way that would comply with antitrust regulations. Nirogacestat has since been approved in the EU. “The pharma side of due diligence is mission critical for these kinds of exercises,” Späth says.

Pharma deal fever boosts flurry of highly complex mergers

Concerns over competition and patents add to legal challenges

Deal fever has returned to the pharmaceutical industry as big drugmakers snap up smaller rivals to stave off a looming “patent cliff”, prompting a demand for high-level legal support.

Robert Darwin, partner at law firm Sidley Austin, notes that lawyers perform key functions in M&A deals such as: verifying the condition of assets; helping clients assess, understand and manage regulatory and litigation risks; negotiating and solving problems. The role of an M&A lawyer, he argues, is like an aircraft engineer’s. “It’s just that they ensure deals land smoothly, instead of aircraft.”

Large drugmakers have been spurred on to the acquisition trail by forthcoming patent expiries, a recurring feature in the pharmaceutical industry that allows generic manufacturers to swoop in and produce cheaper versions of top-selling products.

US investment firm Stifel, for instance, estimates that the number of biotechs acquired for at least $1bn in 2026 so far has already surpassed 2025’s record of 35 deals for the whole year.

BioNTech’s acquisition of its smaller rival CureVac was among 2025’s crop of significant deals. The two biotech companies had spent several years duelling in public.

First, it was over which of the German companies would win the race to develop the first mRNA vaccine during the Covid-19 pandemic. BioNTech decisively won that contest in December 2020 as part of a partnership with US giant Pfizer that raked in billions of dollars and helped curb the spread of the virus.

CureVac’s Covid-19 vaccine trial, meanwhile, ended in disappointment, halving the company’s share price on news that its jab failed to reach the cut-off efficacy level needed to secure regulatory approval.

The competition went up a gear two years later when CureVac launched a lawsuit accusing its rival of infringing on its patent in the development of the successful Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer. CureVac said at the time that it was seeking “fair compensation” for what it said was copyright infringement by BioNTech.

So it marked a dramatic shift in their relationship in 2025 when BioNTech and CureVac announced they were joining forces. BioNTech acquired its rival for $1.25bn in an all-stock deal, part of a change in strategy to focus primarily on the development of mRNA therapies for cancer treatment after the threat of the Covid virus receded. CureVac had sold its influenza and Covid-19 vaccine programme to Britain’s GSK in 2024.

The BioNTech-CureVac deal, which took about 12 months to close, was complex. Sibel Yilmaz, a Brussels-based partner at law firm Covington, which advised BioNTech, says her team worked on assessing the feasibility of the deal. Questions included whether there were overlaps between the two companies’ development programmes or technologies that were complementary, either of which could raise competition concerns among regulators.

Both companies had similar mRNA technology and cancer vaccines in development, Yilmaz explains, adding that regulators want to promote competition in a sector and do not like deals that concentrate market power in the hands of a single entity.

Regulators also questioned whether BioNTech was looking to gobble up its competitor because of the lawsuit for copyright infringement.

BioNTech agreed to pay $370mn to CureVac to settle the patent litigation in the US. Yilmaz says GSK’s licensing agreement with CureVac may have helped authorities to become more comfortable with the settlement of the litigation. “Having GSK involved also helped,” Yilmaz says. “[GSK is] not a small company [that] couldn’t say no if they didn’t like it.”

BioNTech was also able to prove, using internal documents, that this was not a deal to pick off a competitor, Yilmaz says, but adds that the process “was very complicated”.

Lawyers were similarly challenged by Merck’s acquisition of US biotech SpringWorks Therapeutics for an equity value of $3.9bn last year. German drugmaker Merck said at the time that the acquisition would help it establish a “leadership position in rare tumours” and help its US expansion goals.

Florian Späth, a Germany-based partner at US firm Sullivan & Cromwell, worked on the deal on behalf of German drugmaker Merck. Early media reports on the deal prompted a sharp increase in the share price of SpringWorks that was beyond the price Merck was offering. As a result of the leaks, Sullivan & Cromwell teams across Germany and the US quickly had to navigate capital market disclosure laws in both countries to comply with transparency requirements for listed companies, Späth explains. The cross-border nature of the transaction also made it more complex.

Legal teams on pharma deals also need to acquire in-depth knowledge of the companies’ drugs and drug pipelines. For example, had Merck’s due diligence team discovered any problems with Nirogacestat, that could have put a spanner in the works. The tumour-treating drug had been approved in the US at the time of the acquisition but not in the EU.

Sullivan & Cromwell had to advise on how to structure the transaction to accommodate the lack of EU approval, and do so in a way that would comply with antitrust regulations. Nirogacestat has since been approved in the EU. “The pharma side of due diligence is mission critical for these kinds of exercises,” Späth says.

The cheap new AI model taking aim at OpenAI and Anthropic

Start-up TypeSafe AI’s ‘Jev’ model promises faster, more efficient AI for developers

A start-up recently valued at $200mn is drawing multibillion-dollar valuation offers with promises of a new generation of tools that are more efficient than products from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Founded by former OpenAI researcher Diogo Almeida, TypeSafe AI released its model “Jev” only last week, pitching it as a cheaper alternative to traditional large language models like ChatGPT and Claude for certain tasks.

Jev, aimed almost exclusively at software developers, has drawn intense interest and gone viral on social media since it emerged from so-called stealth mode. Its launch video on X generated 40mn views in less than a week.

The company has been approached by potential investors with funding offers that would value it at $10bn or more, according to people familiar with the matter.

The enthusiasm reflects a growing concern across companies about the cost of deploying AI. TypeSafe is betting that many routine tasks now handed to expensive general-purpose models can instead be performed by cheaper, more specialised systems. If the idea gains traction, it could put pressure on the business models of frontier AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Almeida told the FT he came up with the idea for Jev while working at OpenAI four years ago, wondering if chatbots were the best tool for all the tasks AI could be asked to perform.

“Let’s assume an AI-based economic revolution actually occurred: what percentage of those calls to AI would be for human consumption . . . versus for computer consumption?” he recalled.

TypeSafe’s pitch is that LLMs, designed for interacting with human beings, are ill-suited for the sort of programmatic, repetitive and high-volume tasks many global businesses are trying to automate using AI. 

“ChatGPT is way smarter than me. Yet, for some reason, work in areas where there is an incredible financial incentive to automate is not being automated right now. Because currently AI sucks at it,” Almeida said.

Jev does not produce sentences, explanations or images, but instead promises fast, cheap decisions within software applications. The “classifying” tasks it can be used for include, for example, deciding whether to approve, block or review a request, routing a support ticket or underwriting insurance or credit risk. 

The model is designed for developers to build into the back end of their software, and does not have a consumer-facing interface. One developer plugged it into a joke website, “AskJev”, a tribute to the defunct search engine Ask Jeeves, which went viral on social media.

James Hardiman, general partner at DCVC, the Silicon Valley venture firm that led TypeSafe’s most recent funding round, said the start-up was already profitable given the drastically lower computing costs for its product, which makes its model “orders of magnitude” cheaper to use than leading LLMs.

He noted the company’s popular AI tool for fundamentally mundane tasks hit the market at a time of spiralling concern about the dangers of the most advanced models.

“Literally a week ago everyone was talking about the AI apocalypse . . . In some ways, Jev introduced some sobriety into that conversation.”

‘We created a monster’: companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgetsLowering the cost of an AI response is crucial to its appeal. The name Jev is a reference to Jevons paradox, the economic observation that making a resource cheaper or more efficient can ultimately increase its total consumption as new uses emerge.

While large language models churn through long chains of reasoning that can consume a lot of computing power, TypeSafe says their model quickly selects from a limited range of possible answers based on a probability calculation.

The underlying methods are more similar to older machine learning systems that were deterministic, producing fixed responses to queries and therefore do not hallucinate.

This in turn brings down the number of “tokens” it burns, reducing the cost. The company claims each query is about a hundred times cheaper and faster to process than LLMs, charging around 4.2 cents per million tokens compared with LLMs that can cost several dollars per million.

Hosting platform Vercel said Jev drew more than twice as much interest from paid developer accounts in its first 24 hours than any previous model launch, eclipsing ones from leading frontier companies OpenAI and Anthropic. 

OpenRouter, another online gateway for AI models, reported that over the weekend the number of tokens fed to Jev — a measure of how many requests it processed — more than tripled.

Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder recently hired by Anthropic, wrote on X that Jev appeared to have tapped into “latent demand” for models that provide simple, cheap and fast decisions, in an area that has been “underinvested into because of a race to higher intelligence” by the frontier AI model companies. 

However, TypeSafe’s secrecy about how it trained its system and similarity to existing tools have led some to question how revolutionary Jev will prove to be.

Anastasios Angelopoulos, co-founder and chief executive at Arena, an AI model evaluation platform, said: “It’s unclear to me what makes these models different from standard ‘zero-shot classifiers’, which are relatively well-known technology.”

Meta, Google and Hugging Face already offer classification tools that can categorise material they have not been explicitly trained on. TypeSafe has kept details of how it trained Jev, using open-weight models and computer-generated “synthetic” data, tightly under wraps.

The start-up concluded its $40mn seed funding round at a $200mn valuation more than a year ago, Almeida added. He declined to discuss any further funding round or specific new investors but confirmed that potential investors were “battering down our door”.

“We are a troop of missionaries, the spark of a revolution . . . so that is something to really think about in growing the company and not losing our way,” he said.

Lancashire-born entrepreneur who co-founded Hargreaves Lansdown says people with private wealth ‘have been disenfranchised’

Billionaire Peter Hargreaves has warned against hitting wealthy individuals with higher taxes, saying that Britain cannot afford to lose more “big taxpayers” such as hedge fund manager Chris Rokos.

The co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest DIY investment site in Britain, said that Rokos’ plans to move his residency from the UK and the departure of other affluent entrepreneurs “is a real loss” given the amount of tax revenue they generate for the country.

Hargreaves reportedly paid £210mn last year in tax and is the sixth-biggest taxpayer in the UK, with an estimated wealth of more than £2bn, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

The Lancashire-born entrepreneur donated £1mn to the Conservative Party in 2019 — something he said was now a “regret” — and £3.2mn to the Leave campaign in 2016.

Speaking to the FT, Hargreaves said he worries that other billionaires could depart the UK as a result of the tax regime and concerns of more punitive levies in the Budget next month, warning that “you can’t lose many of those; you lose four, you’ve lost £1bn [in tax]”.

He added: “I believe that the private sector, the people with private wealth, have been disenfranchised,” pointing to taxation on wealthy individuals and businesses. “Which government is going to favour successful businessmen?”

His comments come after Fred Done, Britain’s biggest taxpayer, told the FT he was “too old” to join the ranks of rich residents leaving the country, but that he would “not wish to be reborn” in the UK.

Rokos, a hedge fund billionaire, is moving his residency to Greece, which has an annual flat tax of €100,000. 

The departure of affluent individuals over the past few years, including steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, has partly been driven by the abolition of the non-dom regime.

Concerns over higher taxes have risen in recent weeks, as economists expect further increases in the Budget next month to shore up public coffers. However, it emerged on Thursday that Chancellor John Healey may accept a smaller fiscal buffer to reduce tax rises in the Budget.

Last week, Jim Ratcliffe, the founder of petrochemical company Ineos, who was one of Britain’s richest people before he moved his tax domicile to Monaco in 2020, reportedly said that he had lost confidence in the UK and that it was “on the slide”.

“I completely disagree with Ratcliffe,” Hargreaves told the FT. “The country isn’t on a slide, it’s slid . . . This country is never, ever coming back, it’s finished. 

“There are so many people on the public purse that it would be very difficult for any government to change that.”

He added: “Not only are businessmen being taxed more, but it’s . . . more difficult for [businesses] to operate . . . businesses that employ a lot of people have been hit massively with the increase to national insurance and, of course, minimum wage.”

Last year, employer national insurance rose from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent while the threshold — the point at which employers became liable to pay it on employees’ earnings — dropped from £9,100 a year to £5,000. The national minimum wage increased by 50p this year for adults over 21 years old to £12.71 per hour.

But Hargreaves said he did not have plans to move his residency. “I haven’t bought my ticket yet,” he said.

Hargreaves, an ardent supporter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, added: “I do regret the donation I made,” but noted that “I think if I saw a party that was making really sensible noises, and felt they were going to do it, then I might be likely to [donate].”