Partners with Management to Scale Next Generation Data and AI Services Platform

Gryphon Investors (“Gryphon”), a leading middle-market private equity firm, announced today that it has completed a majority growth recapitalization of phData (the “Company”), an industry leader in developing and delivering modern data applications and AI solutions. This investment will support phData’s continued growth of its differentiated set of end-to-end offerings and its expert global team. As part of the transaction, the Company’s management team, including CEO Ryan Bosshart, will retain a significant equity stake in the Company. Financial terms for the transaction were not disclosed.

phData, one of the largest pure-play data engineering companies globally, is certified as a Snowflake Elite Services Partner and an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner. Specializing in AI and data applications, phData offers services including data engineering, AI and machine learning, analytics, and visualization. Founded in 2014 and based in Minneapolis, MN, phData serves the world’s top brands in the financial services, manufacturing, healthcare & life sciences, and retail & CPG industries.

Gabe Stephenson, Partner and Head of the Technology Solutions & Services Group at Gryphon, said, “phData is incredibly well-positioned to capitalize on the punctuated change and positive tailwinds driven by data and AI. phData has an advantaged market position and leading brand in data and AI services, underpinned by strong and long-term customer relationships, a highly talented team of skilled engineers, and a humble and hungry management team. We look forward to partnering with phData to help the Company capture the tremendous opportunity that exists.”

phData represents Gryphon’s fourth platform investment in a Technology Solutions & Services company, following partnerships with 3Cloud, NewRocket, and Caylent.

Mr. Bosshart added, “We are excited to have found a partner in Gryphon that shares our vision of innovative, efficient data and AI solutions driving real world business value. Their proven track record of helping leading solutions and services companies scale in the technology space will enable us to build on our momentum and accelerate our growth.”

Guggenheim Securities acted as financial advisor to phData. Latham & Watkins, Winthrop & Weinstine, and Gunderson Dettmer acted as legal advisors to phData. Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to Gryphon, and Lazard acted as financial advisor to Gryphon.

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About phData

phData is a leading AI and data services company that specializes in AI and data applications, from conception to production. The company’s global delivery team partners with the world’s top brands to execute data initiatives in artificial intelligence, data engineering, applications, analytics, and managed services for cloud platforms.

About Gryphon Investors

Gryphon Investors is a leading middle-market private investment firm focused on profitably growing and competitively advantaged companies in the Business Services, Consumer, Healthcare, Industrial Growth, Software, and Technology Solutions & Services sectors. With approximately $9+ billion of assets under management, Gryphon prioritizes investments in which it can form strong partnerships with founders, owners, and executives to accelerate the building of leading companies and generate enduring value through its integrated deal and operations business model. Gryphon’s highly differentiated model integrates its well-proven Operations Resources Group, which is led by full-time, Gryphon senior operating executives with general management, human capital acquisition and development, treasury, finance, and accounting expertise. Gryphon’s three core investment strategies include its Flagship, Heritage, and Junior Capital strategies, each with dedicated funds of capital. The Flagship and Heritage strategies target equity investments of $50 million to $500 million per portfolio company. The Junior Capital strategy targets investments of $10 million to $25 million in junior securities of credit facilities, arranged by leading middle-market lenders, in both Gryphon-controlled companies, as well as in other private equity-backed companies operating in Gryphon’s targeted investment sectors.

Contact:

Lambert

Caroline Luz

203-570-6462

cluz@lambert.com

or

Jennifer Hurson

845-507-0571

jhurson@lambert.com

FIELDS Group is pleased to announce the acquisition of a majority interest in Erik Sterck GmbH (“Erik Sterck”). Erik Sterck is a leading expert in data center environments, cloud-native services and cybersecurity. The aim of the partnership is to build on the successful heritage of Erik Sterck and to expand the business operations in the DACH area. At the same time FIELDS Group will facilitate a strategic alliance with its existing portfolio company TTNL (a specialist in data management in hybrid multi-cloud environments and mission-critical IT Infrastructures), allowing Erik Sterck to resell TTNLs proprietary Hyperplatform and complementary Managed Services in the German-speaking market. For TTNL this marks a further step in its European expansion.

“After a decade of consistent growth, this next step represents an exciting new chap-ter for us. For us, there is no question that together with FIELDS Group and their network we can further expand our business, both geographically but also with regard to our service offering”, says Erik Sterck, Co-Founder & CEO of Erik Sterck.

Oliver Batz, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Erik Sterck, adds: “We are looking forward to this next step. We are convinced that we have found the right partner for the next phase of growth. Especially the alliance with TTNL will allow us to deliver comprehensive cloud solutions, that drive innovation and business transformations across industries.”

André Reitz, Investment Director at FIELDS Group, adds: “We are excited to announce our partnership with Erik Sterck. We are particularly looking forward to support Erik, Oliver and the rest of the Erik Sterck-Team on their journey of expanding the Cloud and Managed Services capabilities, aiming to further manifesting Erik Stercks positioning as trusted advisor for its clients. Also, we are looking forward to bringing the successful Erik Sterck model into new markets within German-speaking Europe.”

About Erik Sterck

The owner-managed Erik Sterck GmbH, headquartered in Leonberg, Baden-Württemberg, advises companies in the entire data center environment as well as on cloud-native services and cybersecurity. Another focus is on the automation of operations services. From consulting workshops to implementation, Erik Sterck GmbH is available as a contact partner and implements projects in both virtual server environments and container-virtualized environments.

In total, the company supports almost 200 customers from all sectors, primarily in the German SME sector. Erik Sterck GmbH has received numerous awards for its work, most recently Nutanix “Best Technical Partner” (2020), Rubrik Global Award “Cyber Recovery Partner of the Year” (2023) and Arctic Wolf Networks “DACH Partner of the Year” (2024). In addition to its headquarters in Leonberg, the system house is represented throughout Germany with branches in Cologne, Munich and Hamburg.

www.eriksterck.de

About FIELDS Group

FIELDS Group is an entrepreneurial hands-on investor focused on developing companies with potential. FIELDS Group invests in companies with headquarters in Benelux and the DACH region and realizes true transformations with its team.

www.fields.nl

Observability – the ability to track the telemetry data that applications produce, such as metrics, logs, and traces – is one of the most powerful tools a developer can have at their disposal, and represents a $50B market opportunity. Analyzing telemetry data helps businesses to improve performance, reliability and user experience, and the launch of OpenTelemetry in 2019 made this even easier by providing universal open-source standards for data measurement. Despite this, OpenTelemetry’s potential is mostly untapped, with legacy observability tools favoring outdated, proprietary data collection methods that cannot be understood by other tools. The result is a poor user experience, data that can’t be contextualized, and high, unpredictable costs based on inconsistent standards.

Mirko Novakovic, Ben Blackmore, Miel Donkers, Marcel Birkner and Michele Mancioppi set out to change this and founded Dash0, the first observability tool that is OpenTelemetry-native. After seeing the opportunity to accelerate the adoption of OpenTelemetry in the software market, Mirko, Ben, Miel, Marcel and Michele built Dash0 from the ground up on top of these standards to empower developers with an observability framework that is easier to install, integrate, and use than legacy alternatives. Users have access to an intuitive UI, thanks to fully-customizable dashboards, while the platform also fully-supports PromQL and Perses, giving developers complete flexibility to query and visualize their observability data in real time. Integrations with Slack, email, and custom webhooks support easy, proactive monitoring and alerting.

Dash0’s OpenTelemetry-native approach means that it is the only observability tool that does not generate proprietary data for its customers, instead providing visibility of vendor-agnostic performance data that is standardized and fully contextualized. This prevents observability costs from spiraling, instead allowing transparent, real-time pricing based on standardized units of observability data generated by Dash0 users. Customers pay Dash0 based on the count of data they send, meaning they know exactly when and how charges are incurred. The Dash0 platform has also been built to prioritize trust and security, and is already SOC 2 Type 2 certified – one of the most rigorous information security standards – and GDPR-compliant, meaning that users’ telemetry data remains completely private.

Since its inception in 2023, Dash0 has already gained impressive momentum. Its team has grown to more than 20 people and early design customers, including catchHR, ChargeTrip and Porsche Digital, have come on board following Dash0’s early beta launch in September. Mirko is also no stranger to the Accel team as he previously founded observability company Instana, which became part of the Accel family following our investment in 2017 and was acquired by IBM in 2020. Back then, it was clear that Mirko was not only an exceptional entrepreneur but a genuine leader in the tech community – not only in Solingen where Instana was founded but globally. We’re delighted to be partnering with Mirko and the Dash0 team on their mission to simplify observability for developers everywhere.

• Bain Capital acquires majority share in Aquila Group’s data centre business AQ Compute
• Together, the partners aim to build a leading European data centre platform
• AQ Compute is intended to set new standards in sustainable data centre operations

Hamburg, Germany, and London, October 30, 2024 – Bain Capital, one of the world’s leading private, multi-asset alternative investment firms, and Aquila Group, a private investment company and pioneer in sustainable assets, announce a significant partnership in the data centre sector. As part of the cooperation, Bain Capital is acquiring an 80% stake in AQ Compute, the data centre subsidiary of Aquila Group. This strategic alliance, with a targeted multi-billion Euro investment volume, is aimed at significantly accelerating AQ Compute’s plans to develop and operate sustainable data centres for hyperscale and AI customers across Europe.

Founded by Aquila Group in 2020, AQ Compute provides modular and AI-ready data centre and colocation services, primarily powered by clean energy. With significant investment, the company launched its first sustainable data centre near Oslo in 2024, with additional projects underway in Barcelona, Milan and beyond. Bain Capital supports this growth through its capital investment and global expertise in the data centre industry, including its successful development of Bridge Data Centres in Asia. Together, the partners aim to build a leading European data centre platform, utilising clean energy wherever feasible.

Ali Haroon, a Partner at Bain Capital, said: “The European data centre sector presents an attractive market opportunity, driven by robust cloud demand, a need for high-performance computing and AI deployments, and data sovereignty across the region. Through this partnership with Aquila Group, we bring a differentiated, renewable energy angle to tackle the ever-growing power challenges in this critical part of Europe’s infrastructure.”

Rafael Coste Campos, a Managing Director at Bain Capital, added: “We are thrilled to bring our deep European real estate sector expertise and our multi-layered experience growing companies with complex infrastructure services, tenant relationships and talent attraction to AQ Compute. Leveraging our global data centre expertise, we are well-positioned to meet the needs of this ever growing and critically important sector and to build a market leading data centre operation in Europe.”

Michael Huber, a Principal at Bain Capital said: “Having invested more than $1 billion in real estate over the past three years, Bain Capital’s first European investment in data centres means we now have a truly global platform. This investment will benefit from and complement our experience investing in and building one of the largest data centres in Asia – Chindata and backing DC BLOX in the US.”

Roman Rosslenbroich, Co-founder and CEO of Aquila Group, commented: “Through our partnership with Bain Capital, we are well positioned to expand AQ Compute’s capabilities and solidify its role as a key player in Europe’s digital infrastructure. The rapid growth in data demands presents both a challenge and an opportunity — while more data centres are essential, they must be sustainable. Aquila will invest several hundred-million euros alongside Bain Capital’s larger commitment, with Aquila Capital providing co-investments. With our continued 20% stake, we will ensure AQ Compute’s growth aligns with our long-term vision for sustainable infrastructure, leveraging synergies with Aquila Clean Energy, a major developer and independent power producer in the clean energy space.“

Markus Holzer, Chairman of AQ Compute, said: “At AQ Compute, we are uniquely positioned to meet the growing demand for data processing by combining innovative, AI-ready infrastructure with a commitment to sustainability. This partnership with Bain Capital not only accelerates our development pipeline but also allows us to set new standards in sustainable data centre operations across Europe.”

About Bain Capital
Bain Capital is one of the world’s leading private multi-asset alternative investment firms that creates lasting impact for our investors, teams, businesses, and the communities in which we live. Since our founding in 1984, we’ve applied our insight and experience to organically expand into numerous asset classes including private equity, credit, public equity, venture capital, real estate and other strategic areas of focus. The firm has offices on four continents, more than 1,750 employees and approximately $185 billion in assets under management.
To learn more, visit www.baincapital.com.

About Aquila Group
Aquila Group, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, is a private investment company managing a diverse portfolio of businesses focused on innovative solutions across various sectors. Since 2001, Aquila Group has been at the forefront of identifying emerging trends and fostering innovation, particularly in clean energy and sustainable infrastructure, while actively investing in the development of new ventures. As both an investor and developer, Aquila Group remains dedicated to driving long-term value creation and advancing solutions that contribute to a more sustainable future. Aquila Group’s portfolio spans investment management, industrial clean energy development and independent power production (IPP) across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as ventures in data centres, green logistics and Spanish residential real estate. With over EUR 25 billion in transactions and EUR 15 billion in assets under management, the company has established a solid track record.
With around 700 employees across 19 offices globally, Aquila Group remains committed to avoiding 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalents across its portfolio’s lifetime by 2035.
Further information: www.aquila-group.com

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