Exactly. I came here looking to see if anyone else had a good idea of what theory this article was trying to express.
I think the author is trying to infer that Yahoo agreed to buy Summly, so that SRI could liquidate their equity in Summly. Maybe, SRI saw Summly as a loser and as part of their negotiations with Yahoo, they asked Yahoo to turn this loss position into a win. So, maybe, then that $30M price was really $20M as part of the SRI deal and then $10M for assets and aqui-hire talent of Summly itself.
Acquiring Summly seems to have been an almost incidental side effect of a deal Yahoo made with SRI for a piece of "summarization technology."
A source tells us that Yahoo has "agreements in place" with SRI for "knowledge transfer," and the acquisition of IP, code, and technology.
Until Yahoo bought it, SRI International held equity in Summly.
Maybe that would be too overt. Maybe they needed to get a way to get a license with SRI that didn't look like a me too act and also nullify existing licenses.
If SRI actually had equity in Summly, then this is a way to pay off SRI, grab the license for Summly and potentially get SRI to make a change to its licensing agreement with other companies in Yahoo's best interest.
However, I thought that Apple wholly owned SRI, which would make my speculation BS...
I think the author is trying to infer that Yahoo agreed to buy Summly, so that SRI could liquidate their equity in Summly. Maybe, SRI saw Summly as a loser and as part of their negotiations with Yahoo, they asked Yahoo to turn this loss position into a win. So, maybe, then that $30M price was really $20M as part of the SRI deal and then $10M for assets and aqui-hire talent of Summly itself.