Auction site eBay has sold off the Skype telephony service to a group of investors that includes Marc Andreessen's new Andreessen Horowitz group, Silver Lake, and the Skype co-founders' company Joltid. The investor group now holds about 70 percent of the company; eBay retains the rest in a minority stake.
Joltid was brought into the investor group as part of the settlement of a copyright suit that the Skype co-founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, filed against eBay over Skype's technology. At one point during that dispute, eBay was reportedly considering rebuilding Skype's technology altogether.
The sale amounted to approximately $1.9bn (£1.2bn) in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125m, for a total of $2.025bn.
For the full story, see eBay sets Skype loose at $2.75 billion valuation on CNET News.
