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Climb's M&A Weekly: Thoma Bravo, Searchlight, and K1 all feature
Opexus and Casepoint merge, and Searchlight Cyber acquires Assetnote.
Nick @ Climb
February 02, 2025
Welcome back to the Climb Advisors weekly newsletter with five deals from across the B2B tech landscape. Sentiment is strong in the M&A community, with many expecting 2025 to be a record year in terms of deal volume & aggregate value. Valuations are strong & buyers are eager to deploy capital.
Climb Advisors focuses on sell-side advisory for B2B Software and services companies generating $5m-$15m in revenue. We also advise on credit placements and non-dilutive capital solutions for companies of the same profile & in select cases engage in retained buy-side processes for quality buyers. We love to talk markets and connect dots - please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re a founder or investor looking to transact.
Thoma Bravo backs merger between Opexus and Casepoint
Overview: Opexus, a provider of government process management software, has merged with Casepoint, a company specializing in data discovery technology for litigation, investigations, and data compliance. Thoma Bravo has taken a majority investment in the new company, with Casepoint, Opexus, and Gemspring Capital all retaining minority ownership. Casepoint’s cloud-native data discovery approach & multiple government security clearances will pair well with Opexus to make a great public-sector data management platform. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Gemspring invested into Opexus in 2021 and the company saw record growth over the next two years. Both Opexus & Casepoint currently focus on federal government work - with Casepoint winning a 5-year contract with the SEC last year - but Thoma Bravo plans to make moves towards local and state governments as well.
Searchlight Cyber makes a play to to enhance its threat management capabilities
Overview: Searchlight Cyber, backed by Charlesbank Capital Partners, acquired Assetnote, an Attack Surface Management (ASM) company based out of Australia. Searchlight warns organizations of potential cyber threats, while Assetnote’s ASM technology poses as an external attacker to identify weak links in organizations’ security. This is the first acquisition by Searchlight, and will pair Assetnote’s ASM capabilities with its dark web intelligence and monitoring capabilities. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Charlesbank invested into Searchlight in early 2024 and begins to execute on a buy & build. “Red Team” assets like Assetnote are increasingly important in a unified cybersecurity approach and given Searchlight’s existing dark web intelligence capabilities should create a flywheel effect for enterprise cybersecurity.
Pocket Worlds purchases Infinite Canvas
Overview: Pocket Worlds, the maker of Highrise, bought Infinite Canvas, an AI-driven user-generated content (UGC) development platform. Infinite Canvas works across popular platforms like Discord and Roblox, and has developed its own AI technology to create unique gaming experiences never seen before. Pocket Worlds can now offer its customers more tools to enhance their gaming experience. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Highrise bills itself as ‘The Creative Metaverse’ and claims 45 million users and $250 million in revenue via marketplace transactions. The platform enables users to create avatars and engage with other players and mainly looks to target users as they age out of platforms like Roblox. Infinite Canvas has created a complex library of AI-enabled developer tools that have served up to 19 million monthly users across a range of platforms.
Sectigo doubles the size of its enterprise operations with its recent acquisition
Overview: Sectigo, a digital certificate and automated certificate lifecycle management (CLM) company, backed by GI Capital, purchased the public certificate business from Entrust. This move will strengthen Sectigo’s presence in the digital certificate market, as the acquisition doubles the size of Sectigo in the digital security space. Read more here.
Climb Comment: This is Sectigo’s first acquisition since 2021, and its fifth overall. GI Partners bought Sectigo in 2020 with the goal of expanding Sectigo’s footprint outside of the US, across the world. Before the acquisition, Sectigo provided digital identity solutions to over 700,000 businesses and it expects to double that number with Entrust’s business in the fold. As SSL certificate lifespans shorten and more automation takes place across the web, the digital authentication space is expected to see strong secular tailwinds.
K1 backed Onit broadens it suite of solutions for the legal industry
Overview: Legal Files Software has been acquired by Onit. Legal Files Software provides case management solutions to a customer base built over 30 years, which will pair well with Onit’s AI workflow solutions. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Legal Files built one of the original case management software solutions and has long been the go-to for regulated clients like universities, insurance companies, and government agencies, not to mention law firms. Onit is focused on building complex, AI-driven workflow solutions. The legal industry has seen some of the most rapid uptake of new LLM-based technologies, no doubt that an acquisition like this which is based on deep industry knowledge and robust architecture will drive client value.
Article of the week
This week we enjoyed reading the 2024 year-end letter from Rowan Street Capital. In ‘24 they achieved a 56% net gain (vs 25% on the S&P) - mostly concentrated in a handful of big tech names. They give more detail in a separate letter on their investment in Spotify in particular, and some observations watching that business go from a $15B valuation to north of $100B today.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re considering a sale this year - we’re always glad to chat & share perspective.
All the best,
Nick