Fox Corporation is acquiring Roku for $160 a share in a deal valued at roughly $22 billion.
Fox already owns Fox News, Fox Business, FS1, and Tubi, the free ad-supported streamer it picked up in 2020. Roku brings 100 million households, its own free streaming channel, The Roku Channel, and a line of sticks and smart TVs. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors the two companies will operate separately for now, and the familiar purple interface isn't going anywhere immediately.
The hardware isn't the prize. Roku's device business lost $19.1 million in the quarter ending March 2026, while the advertising and subscriptions side posted a $584.1 million gross profit in the same period, with ads alone pulling in $371 million in revenue. Owning Roku's operating system hands Fox a window into viewing habits across 100 million homes, well beyond the reach of its own content. That's a data business dressed up as a streaming deal.
Roku didn't return to annual profitability until 2025, four years after a COVID-era bump put it briefly in the black. Fox is paying a steep premium for a company with an uneven profit history, banking on someone else's ad stack to make the math work.