M&A roundup - week ending 8/27/16

Apollo Global Management bought Rackspace; Microsoft purchased Genee; Apple acquired Gliimpse

Travel planning and booking site TripAdvisor acquired social mapping platform Citymaps. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Citymaps will continue to be run as a standalone business, and will operate within the TripAdvisor Media Group unit.  All current employees will continue to work at the company. 

TripAdvisor will be incorporating Citymap's technology, and it will become one of the company's mapping solutions it utilizes within its user experience.  

Founded in 2010, Citymaps had raised $12 million in venture funding from investors that included Acadia Woods Partners, A-Grade Investments, Coatue Management and Nokia Growth Partners.

Microsoft acquired artificial-intelligence-powered scheduling service Genee. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Genee will be shutting down at the beginning of September. It will step sending out reminders and agendas from a user's calendar, but all existing calendar entries created by Genee will remain. Genee co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee plan to join Microsoft in some capacity.

Founded in 2014, Genee had raised $1.45 million in venture funding from Aspiration Growth, Katrina Garnett, Streamlined Ventures and UJ Ventures.

Pinterest acquired Instapaper, a Web application that allows users to save online content for future reference, from Betaworks. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Instapaper will remain a standalone app. 

Two Instapaper employees are joining Pinterest, including CEO Brian Donohue, and they'll be working on both Pinterest and Instapaper. The Instapaper team will be moving from betaworks, in New York City, to Pinterest’s headquarters in San Francisco.

RockYou, a gaming advertising network, acquired Fanbread, a platform for building branded mobile websites. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Fanbread’s influencers have a collective 64 million fans, with content that reaches 150 million to 200 million people per week on Facebook.

Founded in 2014, Fanbread had raised $2.41 million in venture funding from 500 Startups, Amplify.LA, Kima Ventures, SLP Ventures, Tandem Capital and Wavemaker Partners. Fanbread has 12 employees. 

RockYou also acquired military strategy game War of Nationsfrom GREE. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Enterprise software company SAP is acquiring Altiscale, a provider of a cloud-based version of the Hadoop open-source software. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Altiscale has more than 90 employees. Customers include Devicescape, Glu Mobile, MarketShare, and ShareThis.

Founded in 2012, the company has raised $42 million in venture capital, from Accel Partners, AME Cloud Ventures, Northgate, General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Wildcat Venture Partners.

A Chinese Consortium from Starbuster TMT Investments acquired ad-tech company Media.net. Its in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $900 million.

The Consortium is led by Zhiyong Zhang, the chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology, a technology, media and telecom business listed on the GEM Board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. This completes the first step toward Media.net being acquired by, and integrated into, Beijing-based Miteno.

Media.net will continue to operate under Div Turakhia and its current management team and retain the current usiness model and culture.

Transaction advisors for Media.net were: CVCapital as overall and primary financial advisor and exclusive banker for the PRC region; BofA Merrill Lynch as overall financial advisor; Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP as legal advisor; and KPMG as transaction advisor.

Apple acquired health record startup Gliimpse. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The acquisition was completed in early 2016. 

Founded in 2013, Gliimpse had raised $1 million in venture funding.

FullContact, a provider of a contact management platform for professionals and enterprises, acquired Profoundis, a provider of technology enabled human verified data research platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

FullContact will integrate all of Profoundis' 70 employees, most of whom will remain in Kochi, into its global workforce and add human-based data research to its growing list of capabilities supporting its strategy for expansion and rapid growth.

Founded in 2012, Profoundis had raised $40,000 in venture funding.

ScribbleLive, a content marketing platform, acquired Linkdex, an enterprise SEO platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Mark Smith, CEO of Linkdex, will continue to lead the division’s growth, and directly report to ScribbleLive CEO Vince Mifsud in the role of Managing Director. SEO product and engineering experts, including Matt Roberts and Martin Armstrong, will also join.

Founded in 2009, Linkdex had raised $9.31 million in venture funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, Dave McClure, LocalGlobe and Oxford Capital Partners.

STX Entertainment, a motion picture and television studio, acquired Surreal, a producer and distributor of immersive content experiences. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Surreal will operate as a division of STX, led by VR pioneers and Surreal co-founders Rick Rey and Andy Vick, who will serve as Co-Presidents of VR and Immersive Entertainment.

The addition of Surreal and its VR content creation capabilities will form STX’s first full-scale division dedicated to new capabilities across digital, music and television. Sophie Watts, President of STX Entertainment, will oversee the new Surreal division.

Cooked Chicago, a food delivery service, acquired rival service Chefmade. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Through this acquisition Cooked Chicago will establish itself as the leading prepared meal delivery service in Chicago. Sarah Arel, Founder and CEO of Chefmade, will be joining Cooked Chicago as Director of Creative Growth.

The transition from Chefmade to Cooked is scheduled to take place on August 20.

Quikr, an Indian cross category classifieds business, acquired ZapLuk, a provider of on-demand beauty and wellness services. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

This will allow Quikr to scale its beauty services brand AtHomeDiva. Under its services vertical, QuikrServices, Quikr will now offer a full range of on-demand home beauty services to consumers in multiple cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.

ZapLuk’s co-founder, Lavanya Hariharan, and a team of close to 50 stylists and professionals will now be a part of AtHomeDiva. The other co-founders of ZapLuk, Manan Maheshwari, Mahesh Gogineni and CTO Varun MS will be pursuing other business interests.

Altium, a supplier of EDA and embedded software design tools for the Microsoft Windows environment, acquired Perception Software, a provider of enterprise PLM integration solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The Perception Software team will form the foundation for the introduction and go-to-market of the Altium high-end PCB product to the enterprise market. It will continue to maintain their strategic relationships with major EDA companies and PLM suppliers as they support their market-leading EDAConnect and Xplorer customer bases. As part of this acquisition, Altium engineers will be working to integrate the Perception EDA-to-Enterprise PLM technology in their flagship electronics design ecosystem.

Founded in 2005, Perception Software has raised $37,500 in venture funding.

Tele2 Group, a Pan-European telecom operator, acquired Kombridge, a developer and marketer of Internet-of-Things software solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Tele2 IoT will immediately strengthen its security portfolio through the Kombridge Connect security product. 

As part of the acquisition, Tele2 IoT obtains Kombridge’s current customer base, product portfolio as well as its six employees.

Identity Automation, provider an identity and access management software solution, acquired 2FA, a cybersecurity company that specializes in multi-factor authentication and single sign-on. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

2FA adds nine authentication capabilities to Identity Automation's portfolio.

Founded in 2006, 2FA has over 650 customers across 1000 state and local agencies.

Logility, a provider of collaborative supply chain optimization and advanced retail planning solutions, acquired AdapChain, a developer of advanced integration solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

AdapChain’s AdapLink is now Logility Voyager AdapLink, which enables companies to enhance their supply chain capabilities by quickly integrating the transaction and master data from their enterprise systems with Logility Voyager Solutions.

Today’s announcement builds on years of collaboration between AdapChain and Logility to develop an application with proven ERP templates that redefine and simplify supply chain integrations for companies around the world.

Syncsort, a provider of Big Data and mainframe software, completed the acquisition of Cogito, a provider of graph-based relationship analytics software. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

This acquisition builds on Syncsort’s strengths in delivering key mainframe data to cutting-edge Big Data platforms like Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark and Splunk, while simultaneously increasing efficiency and lowering costs on the mainframe

Founded in 1994, Cogito had raised $11.7 million. Cooley LLP served as legal advisor to Syncsort.

InfoVista, a provider of network performance orchestration solutions, entered into a binding agreement to acquire Ascom’s TEMS business. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The TEMS Portfolio is a network testing, monitoring and optimization platform, which is deployed by the world’s top 20 mobile network operators, major infrastructure suppliers and network engineering services providers.

TEMS has around 400 employees, and long-standing relationships with over 650 customers in more than 130 countries.

Idox Group, a supplier of software solutions and services to the UK public sector, acquired Rippleffect, a digital agency. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Rippleffect clients include Everton and Liverpool football clubs, UK Sport, Visit Guernsey, Aldermore Bank, J D Wetherspoon and the Health Foundation.

Ciesco Group acted as exclusive advisors to Rippleffect’s owner, Trinity Mirror plc, to manage the acquisition.

Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, entered into an agreement to acquire Redcore, a consulting company that specializes in providing identity and access management services. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Founded in 2010, Redcore has multiple offices in Australia, India, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore and has approximately 130 security professionals.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. 

Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, acquired managed cloud provider Rackspace. The price is $32.00 per share in cash, for a total value of $4.3 billion, which includes the assumption of $43 million of net cash.

In connection with the transaction, funds managed by Searchlight Capital Partners, L.P. will make a strategic equity investment in the acquired company. Upon completion of the transaction, Rackspace will become a privately held company.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. The transaction is subject to the conclusion of the applicable antitrust waiting periods in the United States, the European Union and Israel, stockholder approval and other customary closing conditions.

Nintendo acquired 70 percent of distribution company Jesnet from Ajioka. The deal is worth $46.5 million.

Jesnet will become a subsidiary of Nintendo. This deal will go into effect in April as Nintendo’s new fiscal year begins.

This acquisition will give Nintendo full control over the production of its games, consoles, and merchandise as well as how those items reach retail throughout Japan.

Khan Academy, a non-profit educational organization, acquired Duck Duck Moose, a developer of educational apps for young children. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Duck Duck Moose’s nine-person team is joining Khan Academy to lead a new initiative to develop early learning products for young children. Philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network is the first underwriter of this new initiative.

Founded in 2008, Duck Duck Moose had raised $7 million in venture funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Standford Universiy. 

(Image source: growmobile.com)