Reading between the lines, I'm guessing Yahoo really liked the SRI tech (perhaps also with some of the additions made by Summly). They wanted to exclusively lock it up.

If Yahoo had gone just to SRI, a competitor could have bought Summly... and Summly may have had, as part of SRI's stake, a perpetual and transferable license that Yahoo didn't want falling into any other acquirer's hands.

I'm confused on how summly would have gotten a better licensing deal than Yahoo! could have managed. [Honest question.]

I think Summly was really started by SRI or at least co-founded by them and then the exec team was brought on to run it. They created the tech, put Nick as the CEO/face of the company as he had previously built/outsourced Trimit & tried to build a consumer startup on it.

There seems to be very little distinction between SRI and Summly.

A better deal than Yahoo! could've gotten? That doesn't smell right to me.