Skype is finally free — eBay settles with Skype co-founders, clearing way for buyout

Reported by VentureBeat on Friday, 6 November 2009 (on November 6, 2009)

EBay has settled with the founders of Skype, clearing up some nasty lawsuits that now allows the Internet phone company to be sold to a consortium of investors that includes the Skype co-founders.
Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners leads the investor group, and is joined by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
As part of the deal, Index Ventures, a very early original investor Skype, is being jettisoned from the investor syndicate. Very bad blood had developed between Mike Volpi, a partner at Index Ventures, and the Skype founders after it emerged that he’d try to go behind their back to arrange the deal without including them.
Marc Andreessen, partner of Andreessen Horowitz, confirmed the deal with VentureBeat this morning: “Everything is settled,” he said. All of the intellectual property disputes — a long saga that centered around the core technology underneath Skype, called Joltid — have also been cleaned up, he said. Joltid has been transferred to Skype, he said.
Andreessen said the company is now free to build for the future, and he predicted Skype will become a tremendous company — and he citied significant unrealized potential. One is the exploding smartphone market, where an increasing number of smartphones now have the ability to run Skype. Another is creating a robust set of enterprise offerings: Businesses are using Skype, but almost entirely on an ad hoc basis. Skype can do a lot more to help businesses integrate itself into their current technology infrastructure, he said.

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