GoPro to be acquired for $285M, will remain a public company

After years of financial struggles, action camera pioneer GoPro is being acquired for $285 million by Starman Optical, a company only incorporated in Delaware on August 31. The deal has Starman Optical paying GoPro shareholders $1.14 per share and leaving them with about 10% of the newly combined company; it is expected to close by the end of this year and will wipe away GoPro’s outstanding debt of $92 million. The merger, announced Tuesday morning, comes a few months after GoPro revealed it was considering pivoting from building cameras to becoming a defense tech company, and a day or so after YouTuber Markiplier revealed he had amassed an 8.5% stake in GoPro.

That defense pivot appears to still be in the cards, as the companies said the merger will “maximize the value of GoPro’s IP and growth potential in consumer, commercial and defense markets by recapitalizing the company, strengthening its balance sheet, investing in growth and onshoring the manufacturing of products for strategic markets,” while GoPro will “fully support” its existing consumer products. It’s not exactly clear what all that means, and Starman Optical doesn’t have a significant track record to judge its performance: the company describes itself as an “optical-photonics company” building optical transceivers through its Starman New Photonics business, which appears to have been created in 2025 and is building a manufacturing facility in New Jersey. Both businesses are part of Starman Holding, which also owns consumer tech brands Incase, Incipio, and Griffin.

GoPro went public in 2014, when its action cameras sold millions of units a year; over the following decade, the company’s attempts to branch into drones and 360-degree cameras found little success, and it conducted multiple rounds of layoffs as it narrowed its focus back to high-performing action cameras for pros, prosumers, and athletes. In June, GoPro warned shareholders it might go out of business without new funding; the following month, founder and CEO Nick Woodman said he was putting $20 million into the business to keep it going.

“We expect this merger to enable GoPro to grow across consumer, commercial and defense markets as a leading American imaging and optical solutions company, addressing important areas of national security related to cameras, optics and AI infrastructure,” Woodman said in a statement. “We’re excited to combine with the Starman team to capitalize on this opportunity and play an important role in America’s future.”

Why it matters

A camera company that warned of going out of business three months ago is now betting its survival on an untested optics firm’s pivot into defense manufacturing — a sign of how far some struggling consumer-hardware names are reaching for a lifeline.