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PayPal says it isn't acquiring Pinterest after all

Pinterest's investors liked the rumor, but PayPal's didn't.

The Pinterest app

PayPal isn't interested in Pinterest right now.

Photoillustration: Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Responding to rumors from last week, PayPal said Sunday that it was "not pursuing an acquisition of Pinterest at this time."

Bloomberg News reported last week that the payments company had approached Pinterest about a possible acquisition in a deal that could have been worth $45 billion. Pinterest's share price soared on that news, while PayPal's dropped. CNBC later reported that the companies were in late-stage talks.

PayPal's statement, published late Sunday, amounted to just a single sentence denying an impending purchase. In pre-market trading Monday, the share price trend reversed, with PayPal's shares up and Pinterest's down.

Jamie Condliffe

Jamie Condliffe ( @jme_c) is the executive editor at Protocol, based in London. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, he worked on the business desk at The New York Times, where he edited the DealBook newsletter and wrote Bits, the weekly tech newsletter. He has previously worked at MIT Technology Review, Gizmodo, and New Scientist, and has held lectureships at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. He also holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Oxford.

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