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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Salesforce, Vista Equity and Visa all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: Salesforce, Vista Equity and Visa all feature
Salesforce continues to spend with deal for a data management provider and Vista invest in supply chain software focusing on shipping containers
Nick @ Climb
September 29, 2024
Welcome to Climb Advisor’s weekly deal newsletter highlighting transactions announced last week across the B2B tech landscape.
Climb Advisors is an M&A and credit advisory firm focused on B2B software and services companies in the range of $5m to $100m+ enterprise value. We guide CEOs and business owners through the process of selling their business & assist investors in sourcing & closing great deals. We love to talk markets and share beneficial information - please reach out any time.
Salesforce continue to spend with deal for Zoomin
Overview: Salesforce started acquiring again at the start of September, with deals for Own and Tenyx. Their spending spree continued this week with the software giant announcing a deal for Zoomin at a reported $450M price tag. The Israeli company is a data management provider that helps process and make unstructured data accessible to AI engines and autonomous models. They had previously raised $70 million from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Viola Growth, General Atlantic and Salesforce themselves. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Salesforce is not shy about spending big on M&A and in that regard can be a bellwether about where strategic capital is flowing in the enterprise ecosystem. The Zoomin acquisition highlights an angle we’ve seen over and over in the last year — scaled enterprise player acquires a data-focused startup with a core purpose of getting data into LLMs. LLMs are the big story in enterprise for the near-term and they are only as valuable as their data inputs. Startups and agile legacy players have a window to cash in on specialized/verticalized (HIPAA compliant, zero-touch, low-code) data induction/processing technology to ride the larger wave of AI adoption.
Vista Equity Partners secure majority stake in Gnosis Freight
Overview: Vista has announced a strategic growth investment in Gnosis Freight that sees them secure a majority stake in the company. Based in Charleston, Gnosis provides supply chain visibility and execution software for shipping containers. Their lifecycle management platform helps logistic professionals track and manage their containers, helping them become more efficient, reduce costs and improve collaboration within their supply chains. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Containers are shockingly difficult to track due to the tremendous global volumes, disparate & distributed supply chain, & % of time they spend in remote locations - Gnosis has created a novel solution that integrates into shipping platforms & a number of other supply chain solutions to provide visibility. Vista & Gnosis will likely seek add-ons in the space, we’ll keep an eye out.
Payments giant Visa buys UK company Featurespace
Overview: Visa has announced the acquisition of Featurespace, with reports estimating the total deal amount to be in the region of $925M. This move comes as Visa looks to increase the value it can offer clients when it comes to protecting against fraud. Featurespace’s AI driven protection tools helping clients manage fraud in real time and guard against increasingly complex financial crimes. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Great outcome for Featurespace, spun out of University of Cambridge’s engineering department. Featurespace uses machine learning to determine when a card user is behaving out of character to trigger fraud prevention sequences. They serve more than 500m consumers today via a network of large banks & payments companies. Example of product-driven M&A where the intangible benefits to a giant like Visa likely outweigh the financially driven underwriting model. Mastercard announced their own cybersecurity acquisition earlier in the month with a $2.65B deal for Recorded Future.
HP acquires Vyopta to strengthen workforce experience platform
Overview: Tech giant HP is adding to their workforce experience platform, which launched earlier this year by acquiring Vyopta. The Austin based company provides a set of monitoring and analytics software to improve workplace collaboration, with key features including enhanced fleet management and improved datasets for employee experience management. Read more here.
Climb Comment: HP is investing into building a ‘workforce experience’ platform that touches collaboration/comms tools as well as in-office & hybrid workforce solutions such as space utilization & asset management. Vyopta will no doubt be a strong platform to integrate a range of solutions & an established enterprise base.
Strategic sports marketing deals see rEvolution acquire London based WePlay
Overview: Full service sports marketing company rEvolution is acquiring WePlay, a sports and entertainment agency specializing in fan engagement, direct-to-consumer marketing, and monetization. This deal will help the Chicago-based acquirer expand into the UK and EMEA markets, as well as gaining several high profile clients including UFC, FIFA, AC Milan and Ironman. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Global expansion, team expansion, & revenue generation are the highlights in this transaction, with a core functionality overlap that will aid integration. Both agencies specialize in the field of sports marketing, with WePlay generating more than $400m in client revenue over the last five years for global clients like FIFA and the UFC. WePlay CEO Luca Massaro will remain as CEO of WePlay, operating as a subsidiary under rEvolution.
Article of the week
This week’s article comes from Pete Flint at NFX and is titled The Verticalization of Everything. He discusses the positive impact that AI will have on vertical SaaS while suggesting it will see an unbundling occur of the horizontal players. This development, along with the impact of AI agents on SaaS, means we are at the beginning of a major shift in the sector. We are keeping a close eye on it as it will have major impact for M&A too.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick