Owners of Hulu Call Off Sale and Plan to Invest $750 Million

The owners of Hulu on Friday said that they had decided not to sell the pioneering streaming-video Web site, after all.

Instead, the three companies that jointly own Hulu â€" 21st Century Fox, the Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal â€" said they would make a new investment of $750 million and use Hulu’s technology to compete against other online distributors like Netflix.

Friday’s announcement represented an anticlimactic end to months of speculation about the Web site’s future.

DirecTV and AT&T were among the distributors who in recent weeks submitted bids of about $1 billion for Hulu. But the Web site’s owners concluded, according to a person with close ties to the process, that the “equity value in the long run outstrips the sale value.”

In a statement, Chase Carey, the president of 21st Century Fox, the entertainment part of the media company that was known as News Corporation before a corporate breakup was completed last month, said: “We believe the best path forward for Hulu is a meaningful recapitalization that will further accelerate its growth under the current ownership structure.”

His statement noted that the bidders had “impressive plans and offers,” but that 21st Century Fox and Disney -- which have repeatedly clashed over the future of Hulu -- came away from the process “fully aligned in our collective vision and goals for the business.”

The third owner, NBCUniversal, is a silent partner because regulations prohibit its corporate parent, Comcast, from being involved.