Turkey’s first unicorn Peak acquired by Zynga for $ 1.8 bio

Toy Blast and Toon Blast’s maker joins FarmVille’s maker and becomes Turkey’s first unicorn

Zynga announced to acquire Peak for USD 1.8 billion on June 1st. . Headquartered in San Francisco, Zynga’s acquisition is the biggest transaction so far in the Turkish startup ecosystem. With the acquisition, Peak became Turkey’s first unicorn, a startup exceeding market cap of USD 1 billion.

Peak to bring a 100-person team and two franchises, Toon Blast and Toy Blast, that have continuously ranked in the top 10 and top 20 U.S. iPhone grossing games for over two years, according to the press release.  By the way Peak will keep brand identity and work with the same company culture.

Here’s one of the main reasons for the acquisition: we know that Toon Blast and Toy Blast have 12 million mobile daily active users (DAUs). Acquiring those numbers will increase 60% mobile DAUs of Zynga, while the company will reach a wider international audience.

Zynga is familiar with Turkish gaming scene

Sidar Şahin founded Peak in 2010 and start-up raised  USD 18 million in five rounds so far, according to the data by Crunchbase.  Among the investors, those included Ealybird Venture Capital,  Hummingbird Ventures and Endeavor Catalsyt. Something remarkable about the acquisition is from Earlybird Venture Capital: the investor will exit USD 520 million as a part of the deal, according to the story by Reuters. On the other hand, Zynga is already familiar with Peak as they acquired card games studio of Peak for USD 100 million in 2017. That’s not all actually because Zynga had acquired another Turkish gaming startup, Gram Games, for USD 250 million in 2018. Another note on the top exits from the Turkish start-ups was Trendyol, which took place in 2018, and it has been acquired by Alibaba for USD 728 million.

One final note about the deal: if Peak was a publicly-traded company at Borsa Istanbul (BIST), it would one of the top 20 most valuble companies. As for the payment method of the deal, Zynga will pay USD 900 million in cash and USD 900 million as Zynga shares. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2020.

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