M&A roundup - week ending 4/9/16

Salesforce acquired MetaMind; SurveyMonkey purchased Renzu; Twitter bought Peer

Salesforce acquired artificial intelligence platform MetaMind. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The cpmpany will be shutting down. For its unpaid Web users, MetaMind's products will be discontinued on May 4, and for its monthly recurring users, its products will be discontinued on June 4. MetaMind CEO Richard Socher now lists himself as Chief Scientist at Salesforce.

Meanwhile, Salesforce will be integrating MetaMind's technology into its products.

Launched in 2014, MetaMind had raised $8 million in venture funding from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Khosla Ventures. 

Toptal, a freelance network which focuses on developers and designers, acquired Skillbridge, a freelance network, focused predominantly on non-technical business professionals. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With this acquisition in place, Toptal will represent the top 3 percent of freelance designers, developers, and business professionals. Skillbridge will be able to leverage Toptal's powerful client platform and Toptal will be getting a larger group of high level business professionals to add to their platform.

Founded in 2013, SillbridgSkillbridge had raised $20,000 in venture funding from Dorm Room Fund and Summer@Highland.

French hotel group AccorHotels acquired homesharing company onefinestay. The acquisition price was €148 million (approximately $169 million) with a further commitment to invest €64 million (approximately $73 million) to scale the company internationally.

Greg Marsh, co-founder and CEO of onefinestay, says the company plans to launch in 40 new markets over the next half decade, which is where the €64 million of additionally committed capital from AccorHotels will come in handy. 

Founded in 2009, the London-based onefinestay had raised a little over $80 million in venture capital funding. The company manages 2,600 properties in London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and Rome. The company estimates the asset value of those properties at more than £4 billion (approximately $5.7 billion).

Smartling, a global content platform that enables brands to translate content as it’s created, acquired Jargon, a mobile technology company that provides a way for global brands to localize their mobile applications. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Smartling is going to fully integrate the Jargon technology into it Global Fluency Platform, which will let the company's brand clients, which include British Airways, InterContinental Hotels Group, Uber, AdRoll, Shinola, Spotify, Pinterest, Hasbro and SurveyMonkey, localize their mobile apps for audiences in multiple locations. 

It sounds as though Jargon will be shutting down. There is no indication of how many of Jargon's team will be coming to work at Smartling, but TechCrunch is reporting that, while Smartling extended job offers to the entire team, AJ Cihla, founder and CEO of Jargon, will not be making the transition.

Jargon, a Techstars accelerator graduate, had raised $118,000 in venture funding from Techstars and Right Side Capital Management.

RetailMeNot, a leading digital savings destination, acquired GiftCard Zen, a secondary marketplace for gift cards. The acquisition price was $22 million in cash, plus up to an additional $11 million in deferred compensation based on the achievement of specific performance targets and continued employment of a key employee following the closing date of the transaction. 

GiftCard Zen will continue to operate out of Phoenix, Arizona, with its existing management team reporting directly into Lou Agnese, senior vice president and general manager of RetailMeNot's gift card business unit.

The acquisition of GiftCard Zen accelerates RetailMeNot's strategy of providing consumers with more ways to save across the shopping journey.  RetailMeNot believes the addition of GiftCard Zen's discounted gift cards alongside RetailMeNot's e-commerce and in-store coupon, sales and rebate content further differentiates the RetailMeNot brand and will drive higher frequency with users, across the company's mobile app and websites, whether shopping in-store or online.

Ericsson acquired NodePrime, a developer of datacenter infrastructure platforms. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

NodePrime will be integrated into Ericsson's Business Unit Cloud & IP. It is already integrated in Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000, the platform enables data driven automated decision driving complex, massive-scale configuration.

This acquisition is strategic  to Ericsson's cloud offering accelerating its leadership within the next generation software defined infrastructure.

Founded in 2013, NodePrime raised $8.5 million in venture funding from Crosslink Capital, Eastven Ericsson Venture Partners, Formation 8 and New Enterprise Associates, among others.

Intel acquired semiconductor functional safety company Yogitech. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The talented Yogitech team, based in Italy, will soon join Intel’s Internet of Things Group.

This acquisition furthers Intel's efforts to win in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, robotics and autonomous machines for market segments like automotive, industrial and other IoT systems that require functional safety and high performance.

Founded in 2000, Yogitech had raised $2.72 million in venture funding from Atlante Ventures, Fondo Toscana Ventures and Sviluppo Imprese Centro Italia.

Alibaba Group completed its acquisition of the South China Morning Post. The price was $266 million.

In addition to the daily newspaper, Alibaba Group purchased theSunday Morning Post, SCMP.com and related mobile apps, two Chinese websites Nanzao.com and Nanzaozhinan.com, a magazine portfolio, and the SCMP’s recruitment, outdoor media, events and conferences, education and digital media businesses.

The magazine portfolio includes HK Magazine and the Hong Kong editions of Esquire, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, The PEAK, Harper’s BAZAARand related titles.

SCMP Group, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, will be renamed Armada Holdings Limited.

SurveyMonkey, an online survey company, acquired Renzu, a data insights company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The company has used the acquisition to launche SurveyMonkey Intelligence, a mobile app insights platform that expands the company’s existing data businesses, offering data and critical insights on more than a thousand mobile apps and the overall app economy to customers.

Renzu was co-founded by Zynga alumni Abhinav Agrawal, Arjun Lall, and Jason Tomlinso.

Networking solution Brocade entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ruckus Wireless, a supplier of advanced wireless systems for the mobile Internet infrastructure market. Ruckus stockholders will receive $6.45 in cash and 0.75 shares of Brocade common stock for each share of Ruckus common stock, or approximately $1.5 billion.

The acquisition will complement Brocade’s enterprise networking portfolio, adding Ruckus’ products to Brocade’s networking solutions. It will also strengthen Brocade’s strategic presence in the broader service provider space, with Ruckus’ Wi-Fi position.

The Ruckus organization will be led by current Ruckus CEO, Selina Lo, and report directly to Brocade CEO, Lloyd Carney.

Brocade expects the transaction to be accretive to its non-GAAP earnings by its first quarter of fiscal 2017. 

Astound Commerce, a cross-platform eCommerce provider, completed its acquisition of Site9, the company behind Web-based prototyping platform ProtoShare. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Site9 will continue to operate independently from Astound Commerce. Andrew Mottaz, the company's founder, President and CEO, will join Astound Commerce as Senior Director of Interactive Design and User Experience, where he will lead Astound Commerce's User Experience Consulting practice.

Founded in 1998, Site9 had raised $1.65 million in venture funding from Mount Hood Equity Partners.

Twitter acquired employee feedback tool Peer. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

It isn't clear what will happen to Peer going forward, the company only says it is "looking forward to supporting the efforts of the world's greatest conversation platform."

Peer was founded in 2015, by former Salesforce COO George Hu.

VirtualWorks, an enterprise search and discovery company, completed its acquisition of Language Tools, a provider of  text and data processing solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The combined organization brings together core technologies in the areas of enterprise search, data management, text analytics, discovery techniques and analytics to enable the development of next generation applications in the business intelligence space.

Amazon acquired deep learning intelligence startup Orbeus. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition took place at some point in 2015. The entire Orbeus time has come to work for Amazon and Orebeus is no longer taking new customers.

Founded in 2012, Orbeus had raised $1.47 million in venture funding 

Sailthru, a Customer Retention Cloudsm retail and media companies, acquired Carnival.io, a mobile marketing automation platform for global brands. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With the Carnival integration, Sailthru solidifies its position as the only marketing technology delivering cross-channel personalization, automation and analytics based on a single customer profile.

Founded in 2013, Carnival has raised $2.4 million  in venture funding from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, Google Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Bowery Capital, Box Group, Jos White and Mike Lazerow.

The company's customers include Coca-Cola, Penguin Random House and Air New Zealand, has grown annual recurring revenue more than 300 percent since the beginning of 2015 and increased its customer base 250 percent in the same period

Dimension Data, an ICT services and solutions provider, acquired Ceryx, a company that offers a suite of services across the Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration Suite. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Ceryx will reside within Dimension Data’s ITaaS Service Unit. Dimension Data will combine Ceryx’s offerings with its Microsoft Services to deliver a full services portfolio that spans on-premise, private cloud and public cloud, Office 365 for Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint and Skype for Business. This includes the Group’s private cloud offering called Cloud Services for Microsoft.

Ceryx’s focus is on Fortune 500 clients, mainly in Canada and the United States, with recent wins in Europe.

Valnet, an online media publisher, acquired ComicBookResources.com, a media outlet for comic book related news, reviews and discussion. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Valnet, based in Montreal, has acquired and developed a variety of web properties including movie and TV news websiteScreenRant.com.  Since its acquisition in February of 2015, ScreenRant has enjoyed significant growth in both audience and traffic including the re-launch of its YouTube channel achieving over 1.8 Million subscribers in less than one year. The acquisition of CBR will further strengthen Valnet's position as a leader in the vertical.

Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1995.

Barracuda Networks, a developer of e-mail and Web security appliances, acquired Sookasa, a provider of encryption and compliance for cloud storage services and mobile devices. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Sookasa will continue to operate its service within Barracuda and remain committed to its product and customers, and will continue to provide its  customers the same level of service.

Founded in 2012, Sookasa had raised $6.6 million in venture funding from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and SV Angel, among others. 

Experticity, which helps brands with marketing through real-life influencers, merged with ReadyPulse, a social influencer marketing platform for consumer brands. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The combined company has a client list of over 750 top consumer brands including Stance, The North Face, Purina and Nickelodeon. Experticity’s community of over 1 million active influencers, including retail associates and category professionals, will now be partnered with ReadyPulse’s enterprise SaaS platform for influencer recruiting and management.

Founded in 2012, ReadyPulse had raised $8 million in venture funding from Harmony Capital, Divergent Ventures, and Rally Ventures, among others.

Founded in 2005, Experticity had raised $18.7 million in funding from Jammbid Investment Partners, Sorenson Capital and The Portland Trust.

Symplr, a provider of SaaS based healthcare compliance and credentialing solutions, merged with Cactus Software, a developer of provider management software for hospitals, managed care organizations, CVOs, and physician groups. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With the addition of Cactus, symplr now delivers software solutions to more than 3,500 healthcare organizations, enabling these organizations to manage the complete provider management lifecycle and helping to mitigate risk, increase patient safety and improve quality of care.

Symplr is a portfolio company of The CapStreet Group and Pamlico Capital. Healthcare Growth Partners served as financial advisor to symplr, CapStreet and Pamlico. Alpine Healthcare Advisors served as financial advisor to Cactus Software.

AngelHack, a global hackathon organization, acquired Codeity, a developer recruiting platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Codeity will connect AngelHack’s global community of 97,000 developers worldwide with jobs that best fit their skills with companies ranging from Fortune 500s to emerging startups in the tech industry.

 AngelHack has more than 97,000 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs in 65 countries.

Private equity firm Parallax Capital Partners completed the acquisition of data modeling software ERwin from CA Technologies. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Parallax will now operate as ERwin, and will be led by Adam Famularo, who  has been named CEO of ERwin.

ERwin is an industry-leading data modeling and Big Data solution that provides a simple, visual interface for managing complex data environments.  It has an established and enduring track record for quality products and superior customer service. For customers, ERwin will continue to operate out of its existing Tampa, FL, headquarters, with new executive offices opening in Long Island, NY.

MacStadium, a Mac hosting provider,  acquired Macminicolo, a vendor in the commercial Mac hosting industry. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

 MacStadium will pay for it via a portion of a credit line from Silicon Valley Bank.

With the acquisition, MacStadium is able to reach a greater audience on the west coast, supplementing a recent expansion into Dublin, Ireland in Europe. The authority and software expertise at Macminicolo will complement the enterprise-class network engineering and professional support available at MacStadium.

Brian Stucki, the CEO of Macminicolo, will stay on a President of Macminicolo and also serve as a Vice President of MacStadium. 

(Image source: inc.com)