CEO and co-founder Allen Lau said nothing will change about the Toronto-based firm’s growth plans after its US$600-million sale to South Korean search-engine company Naver. Lau, who will stay on as CEO, said Wattpad will continue to operate independently and will speed up hiring. (BetaKit)

Talking point: “The [Naver] deal is about growing Wattpad and taking the company to the next level, and our teams in Toronto and Halifax [where it opened a second headquarters in 2019] are essential to that goal,” Wattpad spokesperson Kiel Hume told The Logic. Wattpad had reportedly been fielding bids for the past three months, with potential buyers including Spotify and TikTok owner ByteDance. BNN Bloomberg reported the “bidding frenzy” began with an inbound offer from U.S platform Fandom to buy the company for US$300 million. Wattpad was founded in 2006 as an online self-publishing platform. The company uses AI to identify stories that have potential to be adapted into books or for the screen. On top of working with studios and publishers, the firm has built its own publishing arm and movie studio to adapt stories from its platform into other formats. While Wattpad is the latest in a string of recent investments for Naver in sectors including e-commerce, fintech and entertainment, it is the company’s biggest deal by far.