It’s likely that this could be true but they simply have something else they want the acquihired to work on and feel Deno would be a distraction. At least they’re being honest with it instead of letting development stall and all the ill will that comes with the usual slow death by acquisition

I'm more thinking of "Deno (the company) lost interest/faith in Deno (the runtime), so they were looking for an out". They like working with runtimes, so Cloudflare is probably a good choice.

I guess this is why so much core staff left suddenly some months ago.