Apple officially confirmed the deal to buy the largest acquisition in its history Wednesday, the $3 billion purchase of headphones company Beats Electronics that will bring two music legends, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, to work for the Cupertino tech giant.
The deal, which nets Apple both Beats’s headphones business and its streaming music service Beats Music, for $2.6 billion in cash and $4 billion in stock that will take time to vest. Along with the company’s hardware and streaming service, Apple receives Iovine and Dr. Dre in a marriage of Silicon Valley tech and SoCal fame.
“The ugly truth is that there is such a Berlin Wall between Silicon Valley and L.A.,” CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday afternoon. “The two don’t respect each other, don’t understand each other.”