WSO2, a company that gives API administration and id and access administration (IAM) solutions for enterprises, has been obtained by Swedish financial investment big EQT.
Phrases of the offer ended up not disclosed, but TechCrunch has learned via resources that the deal values WSO2 at “more than” $600 million, with EQT attaining a “significant majority” stake for the price tag.
WSO2’s solutions incorporate an open-supply API manager, equivalent to a little something like Google’s Apigee, which firms use for setting up and integrating all their digital expert services, both in the cloud or on-premises. The enterprise gives tangential companies this sort of as API management precisely for Kubernetes, as perfectly as its flagship Identity Server — a small a thing like Okta — that businesses use for running identity and obtain performance in their applications, these as solitary indicator-on (SSO).
WSO2, which was launched out of Sri Lanka in 2005, had elevated all around $130 million in funding from the likes of Intel, Cisco and Goldman Sachs, with its most modern tranche coming through a $93 million Series E spherical in 2022. An formal valuation was never introduced, but articles or blog posts from some outlets at the time claimed a valuation of far more than $600 million. So that would indicate WSO2 has remained rather stagnant, however the “more than” side in this article could disguise some motion in the company’s valuation.
A potent keep track of document
WSO2 co-founder and CEO Sanjiva Weerawarana has a potent tack history in the open-supply sphere, especially among Apache Software program Basis tasks, and he was 1 of the main designers of the cloud-indigenous Ballerina programming language. Since 2017, Weerawarana also drives for Uber, which he states is made to “challenge the norm” and make it extra socially appropriate in his native Sri Lanka.
WSO2 is a reasonably properly-distributed corporation, in preserving with the ethos of other organizations started around open source. While the firm counts a U.S. HQ in Santa Clara, and several of its senior leadership staff are spread across the U.S., its middle of gravity lies in Sri Lanka where by a lot of its workforce is primarily based — including Weerawarana, who’s centered in the money Colombo.
With that in brain, it’s truly worth noting that the acquisition was actually manufactured by an EQT subsidiary named EQT Non-public Money Asia, previously acknowledged as Baring Non-public Fairness Asia, which EQT procured in 2022 for €6.8 billion to provide as its personal fairness automobile for Asia.
With a worldwide spread of clients that include things like AT&T, Honda and Axa, this is one thing that EQT Private Capital Asia partner Hari Gopalakrishnan suggests was a critical portion of its final decision to invest. In addition, with cloud computing and AI driving desire for security infrastructure, WSO2 was a significantly appealing proposition for an expense firm with new form in the business software room.
“Software is a key emphasis sector for EQT, and WSO2 is a solid business that has scaled globally with an enterprise client base unfold throughout the US and Europe,” Gopalakrishnan claimed in a assertion. “[We] imagine that the organization is very well-positioned to capitalize on very long-time period tendencies these as electronic transformation and rising GenAI adoption.”
EQT say that it expects the acquisition to close in the next 50 percent of 2024.