Big Tech companies have a new question: Build, Buy or Bail

Welcome to this week's edition of Trending, the newsletter where we highlight BI Prime's biggest tech stories. I'm Alexei Oreskovic, Business Insider's West Coast bureau chief and global tech editor.

If this is your first time here, this is how you can get Trending in your inbox every week.

This week: To build or to buy, tech's fundamental question takes center stage

"Build or Buy?" is one of the fundamental questions for any tech business.

The unrelenting rhythm of innovation in technology, the bottomless roster of aggressive startups and the insatiable hunger for growth among investors mean that a tech company must decide whether to build or to buy something virtually every day of its existence.

Is it more expedient to build a product or a new feature in-house, or to acquire a company that already has what you want, and bolt it on?

For some tech companies, the answer to the question is a defining aspect of their corporate identity. Think Cisco, the acquisition-happy networking giant; or Apple, which takes great pride in its in-house R&D while it famously "buys smaller technology companies from time to time."

And the calculus behind tech dealmaking is not always straightforward: An "acqui-hire" of three engineers may not give the acquirer instant market share, but it could neutralize an emergent threat to the core business.

Tech is different than other industries, and the role and nuances of M&A have not always been appreciated by regulators in the past. That's why the recent regulatory focus on tech mergers and acquisitions represents a new and difficult-to-assess risk for tech companies.

The FTC's look at some of the past, smaller acquisitions by Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Facebook opens up a big new front in the battle to constrain Big Tech, as Troy Wolverton reports. The possibility that past acquisitions could be unwound doesn't seem so far fetched anymore (even if Facebook is busily knitting together the back ends of its acquisitions to frustrate any such attempts).

And as Eugene Kim reports, Amazon's 2019 annual report revealed an interesting trend: The company's spending on acquisitions hit a three-year low. But Amazon's minority investments in private companies surged to $2.2 billion, compared to $550 million the year before.

It's still too early to know what's behind the change, but as an accounting professor that Eugene spoke to said, one advantage of minority investments "is that they help a company look smaller." For someone like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is already in Trump's crosshairs, the optics of smallness can't be understated.

And of course, these minority deals in startups can still help Amazon stay close to the pulse of innovation, giving it the option to buy or license promising technology as needed.

Read the full story here:

Amazon's annual filing reveals it loaded up on private-company stock while scaling back acquisitions last year - a change that may help as regulators crack down on the tech giant

All I want to do is a Zume Zume...

If you haven't had a chance to read Megan Hernbroth's fascinating feature story on Zume - the robo-pizza startup founded by a video-game wunderkind - do yourself a favor and read it now.

The seemingly far-fetched idea of pizza-pie-making robots, the massive amounts of money eagerly handed to a "storyteller" founder, and the frantic efforts to keep it all alive, pivoting from one business idea to another, feels like a sign of the times.

Read the full story here:

How a video-game wunderkind raised $446 million for a robot revolution that mesmerized SoftBank but went off the rails: The inside story of Zume Pizza

So you want to be a Super Angel?

Angel investors - those deep-pocketed techies who put money into startups they like - have been around for a long time. But Melia Russell has a great story on "Super Angels," a growing presence in Silicon Valley's startup investing scene.

The first thing you need to know is that the term Super Angels is a misnomer, because these people aren't simply investing their own money. Super Angels invest funds they've raised from institutional investors, just like a VC firm.

But because Super Angels are smaller and nimbler than VC firms, they can move fast on deals. And their background working at tech companies gives them instant credibility with founders.

Read the full story here:

Inside the rise of 'super angels,' a special breed of investor that's carving out a valuable niche in a landscape dominated by VC giants

Here are some of the latest tech highlights:

A former Amazon and Google engineer wants to make AI more accessible to smaller companies so that Big Tech doesn't have a stranglehold on the future

A top Oracle exec says Google is 'virtually alone' in its Supreme Court battle over Java, downplaying IBM and Microsoft's support for its tech rival

SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund had a no good, very bad year in 2019, but was still in the black overall. Here's why experts are still struggling to make sense of it.

Check out the pitch deck that an ex-Accenture consultant used to raise $5 million in seed funding for his AI-powered startup

The former Apple engineer who created the programming language Swift has joined AI chip startup SiFive. Here's what he learned working at Apple, Tesla, and Google.

And more goodies from across the BI newsroom:

We identified the 54 most powerful people at Netflix. Here's our exclusive chart of its top executives and their roles.

Private equity is finally warming up to data-science hiring. Here's how 6 firms like Blackstone and Cerberus are building teams - and what's holding some back from going all in.

$1.9 trillion investment giant PIMCO used a Nobel winner's methodology to envision the next recession - and concluded that its likely trigger is well underway

Thanks for reading, and remember, if you like this newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues they can sign up here to receive it.

- Alexei