Since this is the Speculation subforum...
I don't see the point of CoinLab's second half. To me, they started as a bitcoin pool, but wanted to be more than that. Now they have to be more than that to survive, but I can't see how they actually plan on doing that.
Actually coinlab was never going to be a bitcoin pool as far as I can tell. I'm guessing the pool was found to be a good stepping stone for people with GPUs to get out of the bitcoin mining scene when it becomes unprofitable.
Disclaimer: I work for coinlab but only as a software contractor and have very little knowledge of the goings on in the company.