Canon Inc surprised observers by paying a daunting $100m for a 16.7% stake in Steve Jobs’ NeXT Inc, valuing the start-up company at $600m, and Jobs’ own stake, now down to 50%, at $300m. The group led by Ross Perot sees its stake cut to 13% but it paid only $26.3m for that, so it is sitting on a huge paper profit. The investment gives Canon the exclusive right to market Next’s computer in Asia, but Canon gets no technology or manufacturing rights. It says it plans that the NeXT machine will be the only Unix machine it offers, implying that it will not be marketing Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes under A/UX Unix. Canon gets a seat on the board but is limited to a maximum of 20% for the nest 10 years. The machines to be sold in Japan will be manufactured entirely by NeXT at its highly automated manufacturing facility in Fremont, and will carry the NeXT brand name.
