From: Nick Woodman
To: Employees All
Subject: Confidential Update
Team GoPro,
Please respect this email as confidential and do not forward.
Today, we announced that GoPro entered into a definitive agreement to merge with Starman Optical, a privately held U.S.-based optical-photonics company. I encourage you to read the press release we posted to our website.
This transaction is a major milestone in the strategic review process we announced in May, and I believe it’s a very positive path for GoPro, our employees, our customers and our shareholders.
Starman Optical has the resources to help us scale-expand our consumer product roadmap, grow our software and subscription business, and broaden the categories we compete to include commercial and defense markets. And they are very strategically positioned in the AI infrastructure industry as an up and coming U.S. manufacturer of optical transceivers that we believe will bring in meaningful high margin revenue to help fund GoPro’s growth initiatives into new markets-establishing GoPro over time as a diversified optics and imaging company across consumer, commercial and defense while creating significant value for shareholders.
To do that, they need our collective experience to execute and succeed. It’s our collective opportunity to rise to the occasion in each of our respective roles. If you believe you can take on more than you are today-more scope, more ownership, more impact-now is the time to show it. And if you’re already executing at a high level, thank you. Let’s keep developing and shipping great products on time and at the quality. That’s critical as we move forward.
At this time, we won’t be sharing more specifics regarding the go-forward strategy. We’ll share more details after the deal is closed, which we expect to happen before the end of the year. In the meantime, we will continue to operate the business as usual.
I’m aware of the continued uncertainty this news brings. Please refer to my email above and connect with your manager if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you for the GoPro you’ve helped build to date. Moving forward, we build the future GoPro into something broader, more diversified and capable than ever before.