San Jose, Calif and Berlin -- July 24 2017 Acrolinx, has been bought by Private investment company Genui. Genui has acquired a majority stake in Berlin-based text analysis software developer from Kennet Partners for an enterprise value of $60m.Bernd-Michael Rumpf, former CEO of SAP SI will invest alongside GENUI, and Acrolinx management is expanding its shareholding in the company as part of the transaction. The investment will help accelerate Acrolinx's continued global expansion and market leadership.
"Content matters now more than ever. To reach, engage, and retain customers, you need a lot of high-quality content. While many companies have solved the problem of content distribution, scaling the creation of great content remains a huge challenge. We have shown how Artificial Intelligence is a great way to solve that problem," says Andrew Bredenkamp, Founder and CEO of Acrolinx. "We are confident that the experience and networks of GENUI and Bernd-Michael Rumpf will bring enormous value for Acrolinx. Together with GENUI, a strong partner with a long-term focus, we will be able to further scale our go-to-market strategies, broaden and accelerate product development, and execute on our vision even more rapidly," added Ulrich Callmeier, COO & CTO of Acrolinx.
Acrolinx is the only AI software platform that uses a unique linguistic engine to "read" content and provide immediate guidance and powerful analytics to make it more effective. The company's technology is transforming how over 300 of the world's biggest brands create high-performing content on-brand, on-target and at scale. The Acrolinx AI engine integrates with all major content tools, giving content contributors real-time advice on everything from brand, tone, clarity, compliance and consistency as they create content.
Acrolinx were recently recognized by Forrester Research as one of the breakout vendors in the field of "Content Intelligence."
"Acrolinx delivers a unique and compelling value proposition for its customers – a proprietary AI-powered linguistics engine technology to help companies align, enhance, and enrich their marketing and product content. We are committed to jointly accelerate growth with new and existing customers and further sharpen the various use cases along the customer journey," said Bernd-Michael Rumpf.
"The Acrolinx offering is unique, easy to implement, and has a clear ROI for its customers," said Patrick Gehlen, Partner at GENUI. "In our discussions with customers, they confirmed the strong value add through cost savings in the content creation process, faster time to market as well as increasing revenues through more effective content. This has enabled Acrolinx to capture an impressive global customer base with 70%+ revenues abroad with largely blue chip customers like Google, SAP, IBM, Amazon, Volvo, Siemens, Facebook and Nestle. GENUI is excited to support the company to further expand its global leadership position." With GENUI as a partner with a long-term view providing capital and expertise, Acrolinx will benefit from a stable shareholder structure, enabling management to pursue its strategy, focused on sustainable growth.
Bernd-Michael Rumpf, Patrick Gehlen and Max Odefey of GENUI will join as members of the company's board of directors.
"We are excited to see Acrolinx move to the next stage of the company's development together with GENUI," said Hans-Christian Perle, Partner at international growth equity investor Kennet who has supported Acrolinx as a major shareholder over many years. "We are convinced that this transaction will enable Acrolinx to expand and reinforce its global leadership position in AI software for enterprise content creation."
Acrolinx had also previously received investment from Harbert European Growth Capital, who provides flexible, long term and permanent debt capital for technology and life sciences businesses across Europe.
Global technology investment bank Drake Star Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor to Acrolinx on this transaction.
About Acrolinx:
Acrolinx is a leading global provider of highly scalable and proven AI software for enterprise content creation. Acrolinx technology helps large global brands, including IBM, Nestle, Siemens, Google, Facebook, Boeing, SAP and Amazon, create content that's on-brand, on-target, at enterprise scale. The company is a spin-off of Germany's DFKI, one of the world's leading research institutes in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Learn more at acrolinx.com.
About GENUI:
GENUI is a private investment firm established by a group of exceptional entrepreneurs and investment professionals which takes long-term stakes (10+ years) in medium-sized growth companies in the German-speaking countries. With GENUI, companies gain a shareholder that contributes unique expertise and a valuable network of contacts from entrepreneurs, as well as ensuring professional, growth-oriented governance.
SILICON SLOPES, Utah -- July 17 2017 Impartner, the world's largest and fastest-growing pure-play Partner Relationship Management (PRM) company, today announced the closing of a $15 million round of funding from Emergence Capital, the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage enterprise cloud companies. Impartner will use the funding on research and engineering to continue to advance its flagship Impartner PRM solution, which is already the most award-winning solution on the market, and on sales and marketing resources to further capture market momentum for PRM, which has become the first and most critical investment that companies need to make to contemporize their channel technology stack.
"At Emergence Capital, we strive to invest in market-leading companies that have a global impact," said Brian Jacobs, founder and general partner, Emergence Capital. "We believe that with Impartner's strong management team, business execution and blue chip client base, they can expand their current lead in the fast-growing PRM market."
The base of partners signing into Partner Portals created using Impartner's technology has climbed nearly 275 percent in the past year alone, reaching more than 3.8 million total partner log-ins from its global customer base. The growing list of enterprises turning to Impartner PRM for its power to increase revenue an average of 31 percent and decrease administrative costs by 23 percent (per a recent global customer survey - whitepaper here), crosses a broad range of verticals from technology to telecom to manufacturing, and includes Ciena®, Conga, Illumina, Ingersoll Rand, Pivot3, Samsung and Splunk. For Pivot3, a leading hyperconverged infrastructure company growing at nearly 80 percent a year, scale was a key driver in its search for a PRM solution. "One of the things you have to do with a channel program is operate in a one-to-many capacity, especially when you're growing this quickly," said Pivot3 Chief Marketing Officer Bruce Milne. "Impartner's PRM solution was pivotal to the rapid expansion of our channel program, which grew by 400 partners in 12 months."
"Time after time after time, we've seen the power of PRM to accelerate the indirect sales of our customers in a way that compares to what the CRM market first did for direct sales a decade ago," said Impartner CEO Joe Wang. "When you consider the business impact of what PRM is doing for indirect sales, which is generally 80 percent of corporations' revenue, compared to what CRM has done for direct sales - the market potential is transformative."
In just over the past two years since the company's acquisition, Impartner (formerly known as TreeHouse Interactive), has completely refactored its PRM solution to be up and running in as few as 15 days and be easily adopted by main street corporations and not just early tech adopters; introduced a stream of industry-first innovations to make Impartner PRM the industry's most nimble, easy-to-update platform on the market; expanded into EMEA and Latin America; nearly quadrupled its staff and moved offices twice; and won nearly 30 national and international awards for both products and executive leadership – including two back-to-back CEO of the Year awards for Wang.
To learn more about how Impartner can transform your company's channel performance, click here to schedule a demo.
Impartner was assisted in the transaction by Mark Bonham, a partner at Stoel Rives, and his team.
About Emergence Capital
Emergence Capital (@emergencecap), based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage enterprise cloud companies. Its mission is to invest in cloud visionaries who are building the world's most important business applications. Emergence has over $900 million under management and is investing out of its 4th institutional fund. The firm's investments include companies such as Salesforce.com (CRM), SuccessFactors (SFSF, acquired by SAP), Veeva Systems (VEEV), Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), ServiceMax (acquired by GE) and Box (BOX). More information on Emergence Capital can be found at http://www.emcap.com.
About Impartner
Impartner delivers the industry's most advanced SaaS-based Partner Relationship Management solution, helping companies worldwide manage their partner relationships and accelerate revenue and profitability through indirect sales channels. Impartner PRM is the industry's most award-winning PRM technology and one of the industry's only turnkey solutions that can deploy a world-class Partner Portal in as few as 15 days, using the company's highly engineered, three-step Velocity™ onboarding process. For more information on Impartner, which is based in Utah's tech hotbed, the Silicon Slopes, visit www.impartner.com, or in the United States call +1 801 501 7000, for EMEA general call +33 1 40 90 31 20, for London call +44 0 20 3283 4465, and for LATAM call +1 954 364 7883.
Bromsgrove, UK -- July 24 2017 Rimilia has raised $25m (£19.1m) in a round co-led by Kennet Partners and Eight Roads Ventures.
The firm, which has created a cash allocation software solution and was founded in 2008, will use the funds to expand across Europe and the US and to double the size of its team.
Chris McGibbon, CEO of Rimilia, said: “Over the past few years we’ve built a unique product that takes the burden off over-stretched finance teams. This investment comes at a pivotal time for Rimilia and will allow us to capitalise on global opportunities. Both Eight Roads Ventures and Kennet Partners have terrific track-records investing in SaaS and FinTech companies. We look forward to working together as we navigate our next phase of growth.”
Alloc8 cash, it’s flagship product, leverages machine learning to make it easier for businesses to match their invoices to payments received. Its other product, called ‘Alloc8 Collect’ allows users to collect outstanding payments by using predictive analytics to help firms prioritise which clients to chase.
Hillel Zidel, managing director of Kennet Partners, spoke about the fundraise.
“Rimilia is a bootstrapped success story, having grown rapidly since it was founded without raising any external capital. Businesses are increasingly prioritising investment in intelligent automation and we believe that Rimilia has a great opportunity to become a global leader in the automation field.”
Davor Hebel, head of Europe for Eight Road Ventures, which recently led a $9m Series A into Decibel Insight, said: “Rimilia is one of the UK tech scene’s hidden gems, built in the Midlands and solving a genuine problem.”
Zidel and Hebel will be joining Rimilia’s board as a result of the transaction.
London, UK -- July 20 2017 Receipt Bank, the award-winning bookkeeping automation platform and one of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses, has raised US$50 million in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners. The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of the company and to further develop its products. The group passed US$10 million ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) in 2016 and continues to grow at more than 100% every year.
Receipt Bank has been revolutionising bookkeeping for small business since its launch in 2011. Working with the leading accountants and bookkeepers around the world, it was the first software company to automate the collection and data extraction of receipts and invoices. Today, Receipt Bank automates a range of bookkeeping processes for more than 5,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms and over 100,000 of their small business clients across the core markets of North America, EMEA and Australia.
An early adopter of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the company will be channeling further investment into its patent-pending technologies. This will ensure that Receipt Bank continues to help accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses to reduce the costs of bookkeeping, realise its benefits and move towards real-time accounting.
“Bookkeeping is at a pivotal point as automation technologies and artificial intelligence are bringing it out of the back office. With Receipt Bank, bookkeeping moves from a cost to a source of income – becoming the enabler of effective reporting, payments, lending and other value-adding services,” comments Alexis Prenn, CEO, Receipt Bank. “This investment will enable us to further develop our proprietary technologies and bring these services to even more leading accounting and bookkeeping firms and their small business clients.”
“Artificial intelligence has become a clear disruptor in several industries, including financial services,” said Brad Twohig, managing director at Insight Venture Partners. “Receipt Bank is an industry-leader in using emerging technology to drive core functions forward. We are excited to welcome them to the Insight Venture Partners portfolio, and look forward to their continued innovation in this space.”
The round of investment brings the total amount of funding raised by Receipt Bank to US$65 million.
About Receipt Bank
Receipt Bank has been revolutionising bookkeeping for small business since 2011. We pioneered automation in the collection and data extraction of receipts and expenses. Our award-winning artificial intelligence and automation technologies now help more than 5,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms across the globe create cost savings by unlocking the value of bookkeeping and real-time accounting. Backed by Insight Venture Partners and Kennet Partners we are signing up thousands of new customers every month and growing at more than 100% every year.
About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $13 billion and invested in nearly 300 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. For more information on Insight and all of its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter: @insightpartners.
CHICAGO, April 6, 2017 / Sphera Solutiions, the largest global provider of Operational Excellence software and information services with a focus on Operational Risk, Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S), and Product Stewardship, has announced the acquisition of Rivo Software, a leading global provider of cloud-based environmental, health, safety, and risk management software.
The acquisition serves to expand Sphera's portfolio of cloud-based applications, enhance its breadth of health and safety software solutions and services, and further increase its global presence. Importantly, Sphera is expanding its deep talent base of software developers and industry experts with Rivo's experienced software development and product teams.
With an innovative suite of mobile solutions—operated through apps for iOS, Android and Windows mobile platforms—Rivo helps some of the world's best known brands manage incidents, audits and inspections, corrective actions, and other corporate risk and compliance reporting. A recognized leader in the health and safety market, with a predominant presence across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Rivo's software is designed to provide visibility and control over enterprise-wide risk, ensuring businesses can be resilient in today's global operating environment.
"We believe it is critical to continue innovating and expanding our world-class products and services," said Sphera President and CEO Paul Marushka. "With Rivo's technology, Sphera now has the unique ability to offer customers the optimal flexibility—with both on-premise and cloud-based software options for managing risk and compliance."
For Rivo customers, the acquisition provides unparalleled access to a new and robust suite of complementary products as well as access to the largest library of regulatory information and content. Customers also benefit from the industry's largest, most experienced team of technical and product experts, and customer care specialists.
"This represents a significant win for the Rivo customer base," said Kennet Partners' Managing Director and former Rivo Board Member Hillel Zidel. "Sphera has led the Environmental, Health and Safety software and services market for more than a quarter century, and will instantly deliver value and depth with its people, processes and products."
Rivo's software expands Sphera's cloud-based applications by delivering valuable new product features, functionality and technology to both Sphera and Rivo customers.
"This transaction represents Genstar's continued commitment to invest in Sphera through organic and inorganic means," said Geoff Miller, Principal at Genstar Capital. "The Rivo acquisition builds upon Sphera's leading presence in the marketplace and enterprise-wide integrated risk management platform."
Sphera is a portfolio company of Genstar Capital, a leading middle-market private equity firm, which acquired the OERM business (now Sphera) from IHS Markit in June 2016. Prior to the acquisition, Rivo was backed by leading technology investors Kennet Partners and Eight Roads Ventures. Marks Baughan Securities acted as exclusive financial adviser to Rivo Software Limited. Financial terms of this transaction were not disclosed.
For more information please visit www.spherasolutions.com/rivo
About Sphera Solutions
For more than 30 years Sphera has been committed to creating a safer, more sustainable and productive world by advancing operational excellence. Sphera is the largest global provider of Operational Excellence software and information services with a focus on Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S), Operational Risk and Product Stewardship. The Chicago-based company serves more than 2,500 customers and over 1 million individual users across 70 countries. Sphera is a portfolio company of Genstar Capital, a leading middle-market private equity firm focused on the software, industrial technology, financial services and healthcare industries. Learn more at www.spherasolutions.com. Follow Sphera on LinkedIn and Twitter @SpheraSolutions.
About Genstar Capital
Genstar Capital is a leading private equity firm that has been actively investing in high quality companies for more than 25 years. Based in San Francisco, Genstar works in partnership with its management teams and its network of strategic advisors to transform its portfolio companies into industry-leading businesses. Genstar manages funds with total capital commitments of approximately $9 billion and targets investments focused on targeted segments of the healthcare, financial services, software, and industrial technology industries. More information at http://www.gencap.com/.
About Kennet Partners
Kennet is a leading international growth equity firm that invests in high-growth companies in Europe and North America. Kennet supports entrepreneurial technology businesses with expansion capital to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value. Kennet is an experienced investor with approximately $700 million in funds under management. For more information: www.kennet.com. Kennet Partners Limited is authorized and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.
About Eight Roads Ventures
Eight Roads Ventures is a global venture capital firm that backs entrepreneurs with aspirations for greatness. Together with its associated funds it manages $4 billion of capital across offices in the United Kingdom, India, China, Japan and the United States. A near 50-year history of investing includes partnerships with companies such as Alibaba, CloudByte, Cúram, Future Advisor, GoodData, InnoGames, iPipeline, MADE.com, Manthan Systems, Metaps, Nuance, Ping Identity, Prosper, Treatwell, Recurly, Wallapop and Xoom. More information at https://eightroads.com/en/ventures. Follow @8roadsventures.
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Vienna, Austria -- January 23 2017 Tricentis, raises $165 million from Insight Venture Partners to Deliver Continuous Testing at the Speed of DevOps.
A little-known Austrian software company is looking to snatch business from established players HP Enterprise (HPE) and IBM in the market for software testing tools, after raising $165 million from a U.S. private equity firm.
Tricentis, founded in Vienna in 2009 and now headquartered in the Silicon Valley town of Los Altos, has emerged as a leader in automating how big businesses test and deploy software, despite having raised little outside funding previously.
On Monday, the company said it will receive $165 million in financing from Insight Venture Partners, a software-focused private equity firm based in New York. Previously, Tricentis relied on "bootstrap" funding from its own operations and had taken only one outside financing round, a $9 million early-stage investment from Frankfurt-based venture firm Viewpoint, now part of Kennet Partners, in 2012.
As part its investment, Insight bought out Kennet's stake in Tricentis and is now its sole outside shareholder. Pacific Crest Securities acted as financial advisor to Tricentis, it said. The company, which counts 120 employees in Vienna, 25 in the United States and roughly another 120 employees around the world, is looking to use its new financial backing to dramatically boost its sales efforts in the U.S. market, where it employed just five sales people, CEO Sandeep Johri said.
"We can take Tricentis into becoming a global company," Johri told Reuters. "We have all the ingredients to really scale it."
The company currently counts more than 400 corporate and government customers concentrated in Central Europe, the United States, Australia and India. They include Allianz, BMW, Starbucks, Deutsche Bank, Orange, Toyota and UBS.
Tricentis ranks as the leader in software test automation by research firms Gartner and Forrester, a market where it has made inroads against established players HPE (HPE, +3.57%), IBM (IBM, +0.71%), and a variety of startups by taking a highly automated approach to testing in contrast to older script-based approaches of rivals, Johri said. Demand for Tricentis tools is being propelled by the wider shift to "agile" programming techniques where software developers at big companies rely on small, informal teams and rapid development cycles to deliver software more efficiently.
Broadly speaking, the global software testing market is estimated to generate $34 billion in 2017, according to market research firm Nelson Hall. Companies such as HPE and IBM hold big chunks of this market with software testing lines that boast broad product offerings, but also date back up to 20 years.By focusing on automating up to 90% of the work of software testing, Johri said Tricentis can take market share from more manual testing approaches of rivals, in what he says is a multi-billion-dollar slice of the software testing market.
About Tricentis
Tricentis, the Continuous Testing Company, specializes in agile market leading software testing tools for enterprises. We help Global 2000 companies adopt DevOps and gain success by achieving automation rates of over 90%. Our integrated software testing solution, Tosca Testsuite, consists of a unique Model-based Test Automation and Test Case Design approach, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management and provisioning, service virtualization, and more. We are established as a reliable enterprise partner, helping to deliver significant performance improvements to testing projects.
Prominent analysts have recognized us as a Leader in both Software Test Automation and in Functional Automation Tools, with Model-based Test Automation as our standout feature. Tricentis’ 400+ customers include global names from the Top 500 brands such as ExxonMobil, HBO, Whole Foods, Toyota, Allianz, BMW, Starbucks, Deutsche Bank, Lexmark, Orange, A&E, Vantiv, Vodafone, Telstra and UBS.
Tricentis has offices in Austria, Australia, Germany, India, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, United States and the UK.
About Insight Venture Parnters
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth software, mobile and internet companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $13 billion and invested in more than 250 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. For more information on Insight and all of its investments, visit http://www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter: @insightpartners.
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