M&A roundup - week ending 9/17/16

Glooko merged with Diasend; Salesforce bought gravitytank; Concur acquire Hipmunk

Diabetes monitoring platform Glooko merged with competitor Diasend . No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The newly merged companies will continue to operate under the name Glooko, with all employees of both companies keeping their jobs. Rick Altinger, Glooko's CEO, will be CEO of the merged organization, while Anders Sonesson, Diasend's CEO, will manage Global Operations for Glooko. All of the four current offices held by the two companies will remain: Mountain View, Chicago, London, and Gothenburg in Sweden. 

Launched at the end of 2010, Glooko had raised $27.7 million in venture funding on its own from investors that have included Canaan Partners, Medtronic, The Social + Capital Partnership and Samsung. 

The Gothenburg, Sweden-based Diasend was founded in 2005 and hadn't disclosed and investment information. 

Salesforce acquired consulting agency gravitytank. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Upon the close of the transaction, gravitytank will apply ots expertise in design, research and strategy to help Salesforce’s customers shape their customer company vision and connect with their customers, employees and partners in new ways.

Gravitytank was founded in 1999.

Concur, a provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions, signed a definitive agreement to acquire Hipmunk, a travel search company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The Hipmunk team and their innovations will further Concur's strategy to deliver consumer-grade products to corporate customers.

Founded in 2010, Hipmunk had raised $54.98 million in venture funding from Ignition Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Ashton Kutcher, Rich Barton, Simon Breakwell, Erik Blachford, Paul Buchheit, and the Webb Investment Network.

The transaction is expected to close in October 2016.

Mobile payments company Stripe acquired Tonic, a tool for prototyping server-side JavaScript. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Tonic has been rebranded as Runkit. The company will continue to operate independently, working from its office in the Haight in San Francisco.

RunKit notebooks are interactive playgrounds connected to a complete node environment right in your browser.

Teads, a outstream video and video advertising marketplace, acquired video ad startup Brainient. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With this acquisition, Teads will offer integrated access to Brainient to all its marketplace buyers, streamlining the process of creating and delivering interactive video ads at scale for its clients.

Brainient will be rebranded as Teads Studio and will run as an independent business unit within Teads. Emi Gal, founder & CEO of Brainient will join Teads as CEO of Teads Studio and will relocate to New York.

Founded in 2009, Brainient had raised $2.65 million in venture funding.

Verizon acquired Sensity Systems, a company that provides conversions to LED lighting. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

a startup based out of Sunnyvale (also home to Yahoo!) that has built solutions to help businesses and others convert older lighting systems to connected LED systems, making them controllable remotely. This is a straight push for Verizon’s wider Internet of Things “smart city” business, ThingSpace, which will integrate Sensity’s business and technology.

Founded in 2010, Sensity now has 42 smart city installations across the globe. The company had raised $74 million in venture funding.

In connection with the transaction, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP acted as legal advisor to Verizon. Pagemill Partners acted as financial advisor to Sensity, and Fenwick & West LLP acted as legal advisor.

The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in fourth-quarter 2016.

Glispa Global Group, a mobile ad tech company, acquired Avocarrot, a native advertising Supply-Side Platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Avocarrot's programmatic exchange will soon integrate with  Glispa's Ampiri Mediation platform. It will feature a single user interface, a single SDK, and a combined integration of ad-networks and DSPs, all on the same platform.

Founded in 2012, Avocarrot had raised $2.16 million in funding.

LeEco, a Chinese a global Internet company, acquired film production company Dichotomy Creative Group. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Dichotomy Founder and CEO Adam Goodman will bring his full staff and other Dichotomy assets to the company. Goodman will oversee Le Vision Entertainment (LeVE) and report to LeEco Vice Chairman Zhang Zhao. 

PayU, a payment services provider, acquired Citrus Pay, a payment gateway solution and mobile wallet. The price was $130 million.

Amrish Rau, managing director of Citrus Pay, will become CEO of PayU in India. He will report to PayU Global CEO, Laurent le Moal.

Shailaz Nag, PayU cofounder, will focus on new areas of growth through new bank alliances, and Citrus Pay founder Jitendra Gupta will drive PayU’s Fintech foray into credit through Citrus Pay's Lazypay. Nitin Gupta, PayU cofounder, will help complete the transition to the new leadership team before departing PayU to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.

Founded in 2011, Citrus Pay had raised $32.5 million in venture funding from Ascent Capital, Sequoia Capital, econtext Asia and Beenos Asia.

Investec acted as the sole advisor to the transaction.

John Wiley & Sons, a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing, acquired Ranku, which licenses recruitment technology and predictive analytics to universities. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Ranku will join Wiley under the Wiley Education Services business, and will continue to operate under its current leadership from its office in Seattle. 

Founded in 2013, Ranku had raised $650,000 in venture funding from Archangel, Deborah Quazzo, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Mark Cuban and Microsoft Accelerator.

Ensono, a provider of IT solutions that help organizations operate their IT infrastructure, acquired Attenda, a provider of critical applications and hybrid IT managed services. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Founded in 1997, Attenda has partner accreditations with Microsoft, AWS, VMware and SAP.

Throughout the transaction, Arma Partners acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Attenda with legal counsel provided by Travers Smith LLP. Webster Bank, N.A. is acting as Administrative Agent, Joint Bookrunner and Joint Lead Arranger for the financing. NewStar Financial, Inc. is acting as Joint Lead Arranger and TD Securities (USA) LLC is acting as Syndication Agent for the financing. Legal counsel for Ensono was provided by Ropes & Gray LLP and Goodwin Procter LLP.

Ensono is owned by Charlesbank Capital Partners and M/C Partners, which acquired the company in 2015.

Luxoft Holding, a provider of software development services and IT solutions, acquired Pelagicore, a provider of open source software platforms and services. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Pelagicore has strong relationships with premium automotive OEMs, Tier-1s and silicon vendors. Its approach to system design is highly complementary to Luxoft’s business model in automotive and across other verticals.

Pelagicore was founded in 2009.

Bridge Growth Partners, a  growth-oriented private equity firm, acquired Finalsite, an online learning and communications platform for the education industry, from Spectrum Equity. No financial terms were disclosed. 

Finalsite CEO Jon Moser will continue in his current position, and serve on its board of directors, and Patrick Bassett, former President of the National Association of Independent Schools, will continue his service on the board as a director.

Will Ethridge, former CEO of Pearson North America, Yves de Balmann, former Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown and former director of Laureate International Universities, and Jonathan Harber, former CEO and co-founder of SchoolNet, Inc. who also served as CEO of Pearson K-12 Technology after SchooolNet was acquired by Pearson, will join the board of directors. Alok Singh and Tom Manley of Bridge Growth will also join the board, with Singh serving as Chairman.

Evercore provided M&A advice to Bridge Growth Partners on the transaction while Aeris Partners did likewise for Finalsite. Based in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Finalsite is a learning and communications platform.

Extreme Networks, a provider of software-driven networking solutions, acquired the wireless LAN business from Zebra Technologies . No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Extreme will acquire customers, personnel and technology assets from Zebra. Extreme Networks will continue to invest in the newly acquired technology which will bolster the company's software-driven solutions portfolio which includes ExtremeWireless, ExtremeManagement, ExtremeControl, ExtremeAnalytics, ExtremeSwitching and ExtremeCloud.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2016, which is the second quarter of fiscal 2017 for Extreme Networks, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.

Customer experience solutions provider Amdocs acquired three companies: consumer subscription billing platform Vindicia, telecoms billing communications platform Brite:Bill and digital customer engagement solutions Pontis. The total price of all three acquisitions was $260million.

Vindicia was founded in 2003 and had raised $37.6 million in venture funding from BDMI, DCM Ventures, FTV Capital, Leader Ventures and ONSET Ventures.

Brite:Bill was founded in 2010 and had raised $3.7 million in funding from Enterprise Ireland, NCB Ventures and Ulster Bank Diageo Venture Fund.

Pontis was founded in 2004 and had raised $34.65 million in funding from Accel Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital.

Together, these acquisitions are expected to contribute 1.5% to 2.0% to total company revenue for the full fiscal year 2017. 

Google acquired Urban Engines, a platform that combines big data and spatial analytics to improve urban mobility. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The company is joining the team at Google Maps.

Founded in 2014, Urban Engines raised an undisclosed amount of funding from investors that included GV, Andreessen Horowitz, Eric Schmidt, Ram Shriram, SVAngel, and Greylock Partners.

Logitec, a provider of personal computer and tablets accessories, acquired Saitek, designer of flight, farm and space simulation game controllers. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition included the Saitek brand and the Saitek line of products, which will be integrated into the overall Logitech G portfolio

Saitek was founded in 1979.

Wave a gigabit fiber and broadband services company, acquired two fiber-optic broadband companies: CoastCom, a provider of high-speed internet, data, and voice services for businesses, and SawNet, a broadband services provider. No financial terms of either deal were disclosed. 

The acquisitions expand Wave's fiber network and its commercial service offerings in and around Oregon. CoastCom owns more than 250 miles of fiber in Oregon, while SawNet owns more than 100 miles of fiber spanning east from Portland/Vancouver through the Columbia River Gorge. Wave will add those assets to its fiber network, along with CoastCom's more than 150 business customers.

Elastic, the company behind open source products  Elasticsearch, and the Elastic Stack, acquired Prelert, a provider of behavioral analytics technology. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Elastic will integrate the Prelert technology into the Elastic Stack, and will offer it as part of its subscription packages in 2017, giving Elastic customers more capabilities to solve complex use cases such as cybersecurity, fraud detection, and IT operations analytics, among others.

Founded in 2008, Prelert had raised $11.34 million in venture funding from Fairhaven Capital Partners, Intel Capital and Sierra Ventures.

Event Farm, a provider of event professionals invitation, registration and event activation technologies, acquired Attend, an event management platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

In addition to its offices in Washington, DC and Santa Monica, CA, the acquisition will expand Event Farm’s presence with a Boston office. 

Founded in 2013, Attend had raised $6.6 million in venture funding from .406 Ventures and Comerica Bank.

Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm, acquired Intermedia, a cloud business applications provider. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

As part of the transaction, Intermedia's shareholders, led by Oak Hill Capital Partners will sell their stake in the company to MDP and company management. Michael Gold will remain Intermedia's CEO.

Founded in 1995, Intermedia has arevenue run-rate of over $200 million, 75,000 customers, 6,000 active partners and 700 employees around the globe.

(Image source: cubbi.com)