Sata srī akāla,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
- Coursera to buy Udemy in a $2.5B all-stock deal
- When Cloudflare sneezes, the Internet catches a cold
- Warner Bros backs Netflix over Paramount
Coursera to buy Udemy in a $2.5B all-stock deal
Online learning is getting smaller by getting bigger. Coursera and Udemy are joining forces in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at about $2.5 billion, a clear sign that the post-pandemic online education boom is giving way to consolidation.
Under the deal, Udemy shareholders will receive 0.8 Coursera shares for every Udemy share they own, valuing Udemy at roughly $930 million. Markets liked the news: Coursera shares jumped about 6% in premarket trading, while Udemy surged close to 18%.
The merger brings together two different models of online learning at a moment when growth has slowed. Coursera works closely with universities and institutions to offer degrees and professional certificates, while Udemy runs a marketplace where independent instructors sell courses to individuals and businesses. Together, they’re betting that scale matters more than ever.
Both companies say the real prize is enterprise learning. As companies rush to retrain workers in AI, data science and software development, Coursera and Udemy believe a combined platform will be better positioned to win long-term corporate contracts and steadier subscription revenue, rather than relying on one-off consumer course purchases.
Still, the deal comes against a cautious backdrop. Online education stocks have struggled as investors question pricing power, competition and whether AI-focused courses will translate into sustainable profits. Udemy shares are down about 35% this year, Coursera about 7%, and both are trading far below their post-IPO highs. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of next year, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
When Cloudflare sneezes, the Internet catches a cold
If it felt like half the Internet went dark on certain days this year, you weren’t imagining it. A Downdetector report ranking the biggest global outages of 2025 puts AWS, PlayStation and Cloudflare at the top but Cloudflare’s outages hit differently, because when it goes down, a lot of the Internet goes with it.
Downdetector logged about 17 million outage reports for AWS, 3.9 million for PlayStation, and 3.3 million for Cloudflare. But numbers don’t tell the full story. On November 18 and again on December 5, Cloudflare’s downtime quietly knocked out everyday tools millions rely on, including ChatGPT, Canva, Claude, and X. Even Downdetector itself went offline, caught in the same web.
After the first incident, Cloudflare said the problem wasn’t a cyberattack. Instead, an internal configuration change caused a database issue that snowballed across its network. A feature file used by its bot management system doubled in size, spread across servers worldwide, and triggered the outage, according to co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince.
To understand why this mattered so much, you have to understand Cloudflare’s role. It doesn’t host most websites. Rather, it sits in front of them, acting as a middleman that speeds up sites, blocks attacks, and routes traffic through its global network of data centres in hundreds of cities. When you open a site like ChatGPT, your request usually hits Cloudflare first before reaching the actual server.
So when Cloudflare stumbles, websites themselves may still be running, but users can’t reach them. That’s why unrelated platforms all seemed to fail at once. If you’re wondering why so much of the Internet depends on one company, check out Sarah’s latest deep dive for Techpoint Africa.
Warner Bros shuts down Paramount’s $108bn bid
If there was any doubt about where Warner Bros Discovery stands, the board made it clear this week: Paramount Skydance’s $108.4bn hostile bid is a no-go. In a sharply worded letter to shareholders, the company said the offer carries too much risk and, crucially, isn’t properly financed.
At the heart of the rejection is money or rather, certainty around it. Warner Bros says Paramount repeatedly claimed its $30-per-share offer was fully guaranteed by the Ellison family. According to the board, that simply isn’t true. Instead, the equity backing points to a revocable trust linked to Larry Ellison, one whose assets can change and whose liability is capped. To Warner Bros, that’s not a backstop; it’s a gamble.
The board also compared Paramount’s bid unfavourably with Netflix’s existing merger agreement. Netflix’s $27.75-per-share deal, it said, is fully binding, requires no equity financing, and comes with solid debt commitments from a company with a $400bn-plus market cap and an investment-grade balance sheet. In short: fewer moving parts, far less risk.
By contrast, Warner Bros painted Paramount as financially stretched. The filing notes that Paramount would emerge with a heavy debt load, limited free cash flow, and ambitious synergy plans that could trigger more job cuts across Hollywood. The board also raised concerns about tight operating restrictions Paramount would impose while the deal drags through approvals.
After six bids, dozens of meetings, and months of back-and-forth, Warner Bros says nothing changed its mind. The Paramount offer, it concluded, is “illusory” and can be amended or pulled at any time, unlike Netflix’s deal. For shareholders, the message was blunt: this isn’t about price alone; it’s about certainty.
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Have a superb Thursday!
Victoria Fakiya for Techpoint Africa
