Roku's Dataxu acquisition only included the US and UK

Roku has revealed that its US$150 million acquistion of demand-side platform Dataxu only included its US and UK operations, resulting in the closure of Dataxu's Asia-Pacific—and likely Germany—operations.

A spokesperson from the OTT streaming platform told Campaign Asia-Pacific: "When looking at Dataxu’s international markets, Roku decided to only acquire the UK operations. Germany, Singapore, and Australia were not part of the acquisition."

The fresh revelation explains why Dataxu is shuttering its Sydney and Singapore offices, as revealed by Campaign last week. It is likely the Germany office will also be shuttered. Campaign has attempted to contact the Germany office but was unable to reach anyone.

The international retreat underscores that for Roku, the addition of Dataxu is more about acquiring its proprietary technology than tapping into the adtech firm's global customer base. Roku only serves US customers (although it has an advertising team in Shanghai). Roku also has an R&D centre in Cambridge, UK.

Dataxu has five US offices in Boston (its HQ), Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. It is not known how many staff have been affected by the changes. Dataxu had between 250 to 500 employees globally, according to Crunchbase.