American gaming giant Zynga is in advanced talks to acquire Turkish mobile gaming company Peak for over USD 1 billion, different Turkish media outlets have reported including Webrazzi, the leading local publication on startups. According to the details shared by Webrazzi, the deal—which it says is almost done—values Peak at USD 1.8 billion and will include both cash and stock options.
If the deal takes place, it will be the largest acquisition by Zynga to date and the largest exit for a Turkish technology startup—and the first Turkish unicorn. The acquisition would be the second largest in Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, only behind Uber’s USD 3.1 billion purchase of Careem.
The stock price of American gaming company has increased by over 13% on Friday to USD 9.15 after the story about its possible acquisition of Peak had surfaced online. It is not clear if this increase in Zynga’s stock is related to this particular development only.
Zynga, in 2016, acquired card game studio of Peak which included Spades Plus, Gin Rummy Plus, and Okey, for USD 100 million cash. So it already has a relationship with the Turkish company. After selling the card games Peak continued to retain two of its most popular games—Toy Blast and Toon Blast, which also happen to be the only one it has—and remained an independent company.
San Francisco-headquartered Zynga had previously also acquired another Turkish mobile gaming company Gram Games for USD 250 million in 2018.
Founded in 2010 by Sidar Sahin, Safa Sofuoglu, Rina Onur Sirinoglu, and Hakan Bas, Peak has been developing mobile games that have reached hundreds of millions of users across the world.
Read this: Wuhan-based video game livestreaming platform Douyu sees 53% revenue growth in Q1
According to its website, Toy Blast, a puzzle game that was launched in 2015, has had 200 million downloads to date which makes it one of the most popular games in this category. Toon Blast, which is also a puzzle game, has also been a big hit getting over 100 million users within the first year of its launch. Per Peak’s website, the game is one of the most popular games in the US and ranks among the top-5 grossing iOS games there.
Data by Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, suggests that Peak’s monthly revenue in May was USD 36 million.
Istanbul-based Peak, according to publicly available data, has raised over USD 18 million in venture capital to date. The Series A, B & C rounds of Peak were led by European VC Earlybird Venture Capital.
According to data shared by Webrazzi, which is apparently from 2018, Earlybird owns 43% of the company. Peak’s co-founder and CEO Sidar Sahin, with 21% of ownership, is the second-largest shareholder in the company.
Sidar was also co-founder of Trendyol, a Turkish e-commerce company in which Alibaba acquired a majority stake for USD 728 million. According to his LinkedIn page, Sidar left the company two years after co-founding it, in order to focus on Peak. Trendyol’s co-founder and CEO Demet Mutlu is an investor in Peak.
This article first appeared on MENAbytes.