Thoma Bravo-owned Sophos has announced its second takeover in as many weeks with the acquisition of Seattle-based DevSecOps startup Refactr. Refactr was founded in 2017 and offers an automation platform that helps cybersecurity and DevOps teams to collaboratively operate. The platform, which is used by the nonprofit Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air […]
Marvell nabs Innovium for $1.1B as it delves deeper into cloud ethernet switches
Marvell announced this morning it has reached an agreement to acquire Innovium for $1.1 billion in an all-stock deal. The startup, which raised over $400 million according to Crunchbase data, makes networking ethernet switches optimized for the cloud. Marvell president and CEO Matt Murphy sees Innovium as a complementary piece to the $10 billion Inphi […]
Salesforce steps into RPA buying Servicetrace and teaming it with Mulesoft
Over the last couple of years, robotic process automation or RPA has been red hot with tons of investor activity and M&A from companies like SAP, IBM and ServiceNow. UIPath had a major IPO in April and has a market cap over $30 billion. I wondered when Salesforce would get involved and today the company […]
The next generation of global payments: Afterpay + Square
Sunday was a big day in fintech: Afterpay has agreed to merge with Square. This agreement sets two of the most admired financial technology companies in recent history on a path to becoming one.
Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine sold to new media firm from former Disney execs
Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s media company that has produced content for streaming services like Hulu, Apple and HBO, among others, has been sold to a yet-unnamed new media firm run by former Disney execs, Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, the company announced this morning. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the sale. Deal terms […]
Twitter ‘acqui-hires’ the team from subscription news app, Brief
Twitter’s recent acquisition spree continues today as the company announces it has acqui-hired the team from news aggregator and summary app Brief. The startup from former Google engineers launched last year to offer a subscription-based news summary app that aimed to tackle many of the problems with today’s news cycle, including information overload, burnout, media […]
How to prepare for M&A, your most likely exit avenue
Despite the headlines about billion-dollar M&A transactions, record IPOs and the rapid growth of SPACs, small deals will continue to be the most likely exit for the vast majority of tech startups.