Tag Archives: Information technology

British artificial intelligence company Faculty raises £30m of growth funding to deliver “AI as a Service” globally

Apax Digital

Faculty, a leading British artificial intelligence (AI) company, today announced that it has raised £30m in growth funding from the Apax Digital Fund (“ADF”). It is the largest investment Faculty has accepted to date, and brings total investment to nearly £40m.

The funding will be used to drive the expansion of Faculty’s pioneering “AI as a Service” model. From helping companies optimise marketing spend and more accurately forecasting demand for consumer goods, to predicting pressures on the healthcare system during a pandemic, Faculty’s “AI as a Service” model can be applied to a broad range of problems for both public and private sector organisations. It enables customers to customise powerful AI solutions to their needs, with the ongoing training and support that guarantees safe and high-performance AI over the long term.

The investment will support the next phase of the company’s growth over the coming years. In delivering its vision for “AI as a Service”, Faculty will continue to enhance its technology offering and expects to create over 400 new jobs across its engineering, product and delivery teams. The investment will also be put towards the rollout of Faculty’s new learning and development programme that will sit at the centre of the business to help develop technical and commercial talent as the company scales.

Marc Warner, CEO & Co-Founder of Faculty, said:

“It’s an incredibly exciting time for artificial intelligence, and for Faculty in particular. Too many organisations haven’t been able to realise the value of AI, because they haven’t had the tools to integrate it successfully into their business. Customers are rightly demanding high performance technology to unlock the power of data and maximise impact. Faculty can help elevate an organisation’s performance, whether this enables better operational decisions, or increasing ROI. Apax’s expertise and global network means we will continue to grow at pace, bringing the power of AI to even more customers, helping them to make effective, robust decisions with real-world impact.”

The funding will also accelerate Faculty’s international expansion. The company is already working across five continents and is seeing growing global customer demand for its safe and customised AI solutions.

Founded in 2014 by Dr Marc Warner, Dr Angie Ma and Andrew Brookes, Faculty has grown rapidly to become one of the world’s most experienced teams of AI and ML specialists, able to support any organisation to make AI effective and drive value. The company has a specialist team that includes over 50+ PhDs with experience of working with over 230 customers across the globe.

Faculty has sustained strong growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, winning 52 new customers in the last financial year including the National Crime Agency, Red Bull, Virgin Media, Moonpig, and a two-year partnership with NHS England and NHS Improvement to help them to build forecasting capabilities and improve data-driven decision-making. The company recently made headlines for its critical work enabling the NHS to divert resources to areas worst affected by the pandemic ahead of time.

Mark Beith, Partner at Apax Digital, who joins Faculty’s board of directors, said:

“Faculty is a world-leading AI company with cutting-edge technology, inspiring people and culture, and with phenomenal customer feedback. They enable customers to realise the tremendous value of AI quickly but responsibly, providing robust, fair and explainable AI, with advanced data privacy. We have seen the power and impact of their solutions first-hand, as a client, and are thrilled to partner with Marc, Angie, Andy and the team to support their global expansion.”

The Apax Digital Fund joins Faculty’s existing investors, including GMG Ventures LP, LocalGlobe, and Jaan Tallinn, one of Skype’s founding engineers.

About Faculty

Faculty is a leading British AI company that helps organisations who have the scale, data, and foresight to adopt AI into their business. We’re helping make AI real across society by providing a unique combination of strategy, software, and skills to our customers: everything needed to successfully create value from AI. Founder-led and with over 50 PhDs, we are a team of specialists that has worked with over 230 organisations to make AI real.

Faculty is headquartered in London and is backed by investors that include GMG Ventures LP, LocalGlobe and Jaan Tallinn, one of Skype’s founding engineers. Faculty is one of the fastest growing private British technology companies and is recognised for its sales growth in The Sunday Times 2020 Tech Track 100 list.

About Apax and Apax Digital

The Apax Digital Fund, which is advised by Apax Partners LLP (“Apax”) specializes in growth equity and buyout investments in high-growth enterprise software, consumer internet, and technology-enabled services companies worldwide.

The Apax Digital team leverages Apax’s deep tech investing expertise, global platform, and specialized operating experts, to enable technology companies and their management teams to accelerate the achievement of their full potential. For further information, please visit: apaxdigital.com.

Apax is a leading global private equity advisory firm. For nearly 50 years, Apax has worked to inspire growth and ideas that transform businesses. The firm has raised and advised funds with aggregate commitments of more than $60 billion. The Apax Funds invest in companies across four global sectors of Tech, Services, Healthcare and Internet/Consumer. These funds provide long-term equity financing to build and strengthen world-class companies. For more information see: apax.com.

Company

Faculty

Global media contact

Katarina Sallerfors

t: +44 20 7872 6300

Luke Charalambous

t: +44 20 7872 6300

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Mentha Capital expands in occupational health and safety services through its acquisition of ENRGY

Mentha

Investor Mentha Capital has acquired the shares of ENRGY in Business Group. At the start of 2020, Mentha established its position in the market with a majority stake in paraDIGMA Groep. Both companies, operating in the field of absenteeism and sustainable employability, will continue to operate under their own brand name, services, organisation and locations. The transaction is subject to the approval of the Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa).

ENRGY is a fast-growing health and safety service, and with 200 professionals, helps its clients as a strategic and executive partner in structurally reducing absenteeism. In its services, ENRGY places a strong emphasis on the variables that determine sustainable work ability, summarised in The House of Work Ability. The founders and directors Marcel Houtman, Hidde Froentjes and Martijn ten Bokum will remain actively operationally involved and become co-shareholders in the Group Holding over ENRGY and paraDIGMA.

Marcel Houtman, ENRGY: “We are very pleased to have taken this step. Mentha can properly support us in continuing our growth and innovation ambitions, while our strong culture and vision is maintained. This enables us to build on our ultimate dream to allow the entire working Netherlands to take control of work capacity, with reduced absenteeism and increased job satisfaction as the goal. We believe that with the attractive propositions, knowledge and expertise of both companies, we are creating a powerhouse of innovation, in order to be able to respond to the rapidly changing market and to enhance the service we provide to our customers and clients.”

paraDIGMA Groep is a distinctive group of companies operating in the field of sustainable employability, active through a nationwide network and more than 600 employees. The Working Conditions Service division (De Arbodienst) is an occupational health and safety service provider with an unconventional view on absenteeism, which leads to progressive and highly effective absenteeism and health policies within organisations. The other components offer, among other things, psychological interventions, outplacement and reintegration, work-related research and advice, and company training. The company was founded in 2003 by Rudo Vissers, who is still active as managing director of paraDIGMA Groep and co-shareholder of the group holding.

Rudo Vissers, paraDIGMA Groep: “We are impressed by the solid position which ENRGY has attained in the market in recent years. From their own unique approach, ENERGY and paraDIGMA share a common vision on the subject of work and health. Both companies realise the great importance of culture and leadership in organisations in increasing employability and structurally reducing absenteeism, and proritise a high-quality medical basis and personal attention for clients.”

Mentha Capital invests in established, profitable companies which demonstrate clear potential for further expansion through organic growth, expansion into new markets and/or acquisitions. Mentha has 15 participating interests, active in various end markets.

Barend Rutten, Mentha Capital: “We are pleased to enter into a partnership with ENRGY. Sustainable employabiity is an increasingly important theme for companies and society at large. The market is in full swing and provides many opportunities. Mentha is happy to assist both companies in fulfilling their organic and acquisitive growth ambitions.”

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Climate intelligence startup Cervest snaps up $30m in Series A funding

Cervest has raised $30m in a Series A funding round to expand its AI-powered climate intelligence platform into the US and European markets.

The startup’s platform provides a model for assessing climate risk, such as flooding and forest fires, to a physical asset.

Cervest claims its EarthScan product can give enterprises and governments climate insights on areas the size of a building going forward 80 years to help manage assets or inform construction decisions.

The Series A brings Cervest’s total funding to $36.2m. Draper Esprit led the financing round and was joined by existing investors Astanor Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and Future Positive Capital.

New investors in the oversubscribed round include the venture fund of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, TIME Ventures, along with UNTITLED, the venture fund of Magnus Rausing, heir to the Tetra Pak fortune.

Cervest’s platform is available via a freemium model in which anyone can access basic climate intelligent features. Paying customers such as consultancy firms, insurers and policymakers have access to more granular data and more frequent updates. Its data is gathered from public and private sources.

“Climate Intelligence is business Intelligence for managing climate risk,” said Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest. “Climate volatility has thrown us into a new era where Climate Intelligence needs to be integrated into all decisions. Organizations that fail to do so risk being blindsided by climate events such as the recent floods and fires in Australia, the droughts in Europe, and the winter freeze in Texas.”

Bassi founded Cervest in 2016 after unpredictable strong winds flattened a $6m mill and flash floods destroyed an entire season’s crops on his sustainable farm in Ghana, West Africa. The lack of reliable climate data turned him to AI. The startup brought in data scientists from Imperial College London to solve the complex mathematical problem of marrying fragmented data.

“What we realised [is that] somebody needs to fuse together all these world scientists on a single platform, which meant a huge amount of data engineering,” Bassi told Verdict Magazine in an interview last year. “And underpinning that is a huge amount of domain knowledge, particularly around physical sciences.”

A handful of other startups, such as Tractable, have turned to AI to provide climate risk solutions. But Bassi believes his platform’s ability to look at climate risk as “collective whole” sets his company apart.

“Climate Tech has grabbed a lot of attention recently, with good reason. But solutions come from understanding the problem – Climate Intelligence is a new $40 billion market category which seeks to provide us with answers,” said Vinoth Jayakumar, partner and fintech practice lead at Draper Esprit.

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CapMan Growth and Mandatum to accelerate Sofigate’s growth

Capman

Sofigate to boost its turnover towards EUR 500 million

Sofigate, the business technology transformation company, will be boosted by two private equity investors when CapMan Growth and Mandatum Private Equity become minority shareholders in the company. With their decision, the new owners are showing trust in a fast-growing digital transformation expert that combines program leadership, continuous management of business change and modern technology platforms. Sofigate aims for an annual turnover of EUR 500 million by 2025.

“CapMan and Mandatum bring financial and capital market expertise to the company, which will enable us to accelerate our growth. Company acquisitions are part of the strategy, and private equity investors ensure that financing is available when needed,” says Sofigate CEO Sami Karkkila.

Sofigate has grown rapidly in recent years. In five years, the company increased its turnover fivefold to the current level of EUR 100 million. Maintaining a similar growth rate requires both rapid organic growth and acquisitions.

Business technology a hot topic

The business technology sector is predicted to grow rapidly in the Nordic countries as well. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalisation and spurred companies to invest even more in their digital processes.

“As a strategic investor, we see great potential in the development of Sofigate’s operations on the path the company has chosen. Sofigate operates in strong growth markets, and these are further intensified by the transformation brought about by digitalisation. As private equity investors, we bring considerable added value by significantly accelerating the implementation of Sofigate’s internationalisation and acquisition strategies,” says CapMan Growth Managing Partner Juha Mikkola of the company’s future.

“As technology takes centre stage in business operations across industries, the winners will be companies that understand the relationships between technology and strategy, business operations and product development. In this digitalisation-driven market, Sofigate has a strong position in Finland and significant growth potential in other Nordic countries. As a strategic investor and in addition to our financial investment, we provide Sofigate with access to our growth strategy and acquisition expertise,” says Alexander Antas, head of Mandatum Private Equity.

Strong ownership by staff also

In addition to CapMan and Mandatum, Sofigate is owned by LähiTapiola, the company’s founders, and a significant number of its personnel. Institutional investors now own a little less than one-fifth of Sofigate in total. Even after the transaction, Sofigate is to a large extent owned by its employees.

“The investments will also strengthen the composition of the board, which will increase the company’s ability to develop its operations. We are ready to implement the chosen growth strategy both operationally and at the board level, and we will be able to move very quickly if necessary,” says Karkkila.

Sofigate was founded in 2003 as an IT management service provider, but has gradually grown into the leading business technology transformation expert in the Nordic countries. A key driver of that growth has been the digital revolution in business, which has forced customers to make their traditional operations technology-driven.

“We offer customers technological expertise and transformation management in one package,” Karkkila says. “We are a pioneer in combining the best technologies, people and management models.”

For more information, please contact:

Juha Mikkola, Managing Partner, CapMan Growth
juha.mikkola[a]capman.com
Tel. +358 50 590 0522

Sami Karkkila, CEO, Sofigate
sami.karkkila[a]sofigate.com
Tel. +358 400 805 446

Sofigate is a business technology transformation company with approximately 600 employees in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Sofigate helps its customers develop the interplay between business and technology: to design, build and implement transformations and business-friendly technology solutions. The company utilizes the Business Technology Standard and the world’s leading technology platforms such as ServiceNow, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle and Google Cloud.

CapMan Growth is a leading Finnish growth investor. The team’s second MEUR 97 fund, CapMan Growth II established in 2020, makes significant minority investments in growth stage companies with ambitious growth and expansion goals. CapMan is part of CapMan Group, a leading Nordic private asset expert with an active approach to value creation. As one of the Nordic private equity pioneers, we have developed hundreds of companies and real estate assets and created substantial value in these businesses and assets over the past 30 years. With close to €4 billion in assets under management, we have a broad presence in the unlisted market through our local and specialised teams. 

Mandatum Private Equity (MPE) is a Finnish growth oriented investor with ca. 160m EUR of AUM. MPE focuses on significant minority investments in Finnish and Nordic privately held companies with proven business models and strong growth ambitions. Mandatum Private Equity is part of Mandatum Asset Management (MAM), a new asset management company that was formed by combining Sampo Group’s proprietary balance sheet, client assets, and investment operations from Sampo Plc and Mandatum Life. MAM leverages Sampo’s investment heritage as one of the most successful institutional investors in the Nordic region. MAM manages ca. 24bn EUR and employs ca. 100 investment professionals. MAM belongs to the Sampo Group.

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Accounting SaaS Regate.io announces 7M€ funding round

360 Capital

Paris based SaaS platform Regate.io raises 7M€ round to facilitate and automate accounting workflows for CFOs and accountants, including invoicing, expense management and payments. 360 Capital leads the round, alongside Financière Saint James and renowned BA including Alexis Bonillo, Pierre-François Thaler, Antoine Bello and Constantin Wolfrom.

Founded in 2019 by Alexis Renard and Laura Pallier, Regate.io aims at simplifying accounting processes by providing able to integrate and automate enterprise accounting tools.

With this round, Regate.io will accelerate its product development and deployment, as well as focus on building its team.

We are delighted to support the fantastic duo composed of Alexis and Laura in this new entrepreneurial adventure, bringing together the experience of a successful serial entrepreneur and a real understanding of the market needs.

Emanuele Levi, Partner at 360 Capital

 

Read the full press release here.

 

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Astorg and Bridgepoint acquire financial software company Fenergo

Bridgepoint

Dublin, 18th May 2021 – Astorg and Bridgepoint are pleased to announce that they have signed a definitive agreement alongside Fenergo’s management team to acquire Fenergo, the leading provider of Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) software solutions for financial institutions, from Insight Partners. The acquisition follows a period of strong expansion for Fenergo and will drive investment in the firm’s SaaS strategy, product line development and support an expanding team through the next phase of growth.

Established in 2009, Fenergo’s award winning SaaS platform provides solutions to the world’s largest and most complex financial institutions, helping to fight financial crime and to enhance customer journeys while being compliant every step of the way. Fenergo currently helps top financial institutions including ICBC Standard Bank, Santander, Mizuho, ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas to digitally transform their end-to-end client lifecycle processes. Fenergo’s API-first ecosystem of channels, systems and data providers enables financial institutions to offer a truly frictionless customer experience.

The company operates in a specialised part of the highly regulated financial services sector, with strong potential for continued growth given the increasing importance of digitalisation and compliance. In the financial year ending March 2021, Fenergo’s revenue increased by 17% to USD$107 million.

Marc Murphy, Founder and CEO, Fenergo said: “We are delighted that Astorg and Bridgepoint have chosen to invest in our company, providing us with the financial strength required to pursue our ambitious high-growth strategy. Both Astorg and Bridgepoint have enormous experience and credibility in our sector, something I am keen to leverage over the coming years. Ultimately, we only exist to serve the needs of our customers. We are looking forward to partnering with them in the next phase of our development.”

Benoît Ficheur, Partner in charge of growth investments at Astorg, said: “We have tracked Fenergo for many years and have been impressed with its strong market position, innovative technology and consistent strong positive feedback from a customer base of large financial institutions. We are thrilled to partner with Bridgepoint to help shape the future of this unique company. Marc Murphy and his team have proven their strength year after year in this very demanding industry. This investment confirms our commitment to backing fast-growing and innovative software leaders.”

David Nicault, Partner responsible for Bridgepoint’s investment activity in technology, said: “We are delighted to partner with Astorg on the exciting next phase for Fenergo. Continued pressure on financial institutions to improve their compliance work, while at the same time managing margins and increased regulation, has created the need for integrated digital solutions that enable reduced operating costs, improve capital allocation and comply with regulations. We are looking forward to working closely with the management team at Fenergo as they build on the company’s success to date and realise its full growth potential.”

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Advisors involved included:

– for Fenergo: UBS, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, William Fry, and PwC

– for Bridgepoint and Astorg: Credit Suisse, William Blair, Torch Partners, Arma Partners, Paul Hastings, Allen & Overy, Ernst & Young, and GreySpark Partners

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Lightyear Capital, Oak HC/FT, and Greater Sum Ventures Close on Sale of Therapy Brands to KKR

Lightyear
05.18.2021

New York, NY – May 18, 2021 – Lightyear Capital LLC (“Lightyear”), Oak HC/FT, and Greater Sum Ventures (“GSV”) today announced that investment funds affiliated with Lightyear, Oak HC/FT, and GSV have completed the sale of Therapy Brands to KKR. Financial terms were not disclosed. Funds affiliated with Lightyear and Oak HC/FT acquired a majority stake in Therapy Brands in July 2018.

Therapy Brands provides practice management, integrated patient payments, revenue cycle management, patient engagement, tele-health and data management solutions for mental and behavioral health practices to support their clinical, administrative and billing needs. The Therapy Brands suite of software tools enables more than 28,000 practices in psychotherapy, applied behavioral analysis, substance use recovery and physical therapy to streamline their practices and focus on their patients.

“We are delighted with the outcome of our investment in Therapy Brands,” said Mark F. Vassallo, Managing Partner of Lightyear Capital. “Over the course of our investment, Therapy Brands tripled in size, completing nine strategic acquisitions, increasing its client base, growing revenue by cross-selling value-added solutions and doubling its payments penetration. Our experience with Therapy Brands further supports our pursuit of attractive investment opportunities in embedded payments models as we see tremendous demand across a number of fast-growing verticals. We wish Kimberly and the entire team at Therapy Brands great continued success.”

“Oak HC/FT’s investment in Therapy Brands highlights our dual aim of backing tech-enabled companies that are increasing the quality and lowering the cost of healthcare,” said Andrew Adams, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Oak HC/FT. “We are proud of all that Therapy Brands – led by a dedicated team – has accomplished and we’re looking forward to seeing how the company continues to innovate at a time when mental and behavioral health care is more in demand and important than ever.”

“We are pleased with the success of our investment in Therapy Brands,” said Ross Croley, CEO and Founder of GSV. “From the platform’s inception, we’ve provided strategic guidance to the management team on acquisitions and operations, and it’s exciting to see the execution and outcome of our thesis.”

“I want to thank the entire Therapy Brands team for their invaluable support and investment to drive client growth, adoption of our value-added solutions and expand our portfolio,” said Kimberly O’Loughlin, CEO of Therapy Brands. “While we are excited about partnering with KKR on our next chapter of growth, we are grateful to Lightyear, Oak HC/FT and GSV for their support in enabling our success.”

William Blair and TripleTree acted as financial advisors and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP as legal advisor to Therapy Brands.

About Therapy Brands
At a time when the topics of digital connectivity and access to care are at the forefront of the cultural conversation in the U.S., Therapy Brands is equipping practitioners with effective solutions to address the growing needs of mental and behavioral health, substance use recovery, applied behavior analysis and rehabilitation populations. Through purpose-built, fully integrated practice management and HER solutions provided by Therapy Brands, healthcare providers can improve patient quality of care and support better health outcomes for those they serve. Therapy Brands is headquartered in Birmingham, AL. For more information, please visit us at: https://www.therapybrands.com.

About Lightyear Capital LLC
Founded in 2000, Lightyear Capital is a financial services-focused private equity firm based in New York. Through its affiliated private equity funds, Lightyear makes primarily control investments in North America-based, middle-market companies across the financial services spectrum, including asset and wealth management, banking, brokerage, healthcare financial services, insurance, payments and processing, and specialty finance. The firm brings focus and discipline to its investment process, as well as operating, transaction and strategic management experience, along with significant contacts and resources beyond capital. For more information, please visit www.lycap.com.

About Oak HC/FT
Founded in 2014, Oak HC/FT is the premier venture growth-equity fund investing in Healthcare Information & Services (“HC”) and Financial Services Technology (“FT”). With $3.3 billion in assets under management, we are focused on driving transformation in these industries by providing entrepreneurs and companies with strategic counsel, board-level participation, business plan execution and access to our extensive network of industry leaders. Oak HC/FT is headquartered in Greenwich, CT, with offices in Boston and San Francisco. Follow Oak HC/FT on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.

About Greater Sum Ventures
Greater Sum Ventures (GSV) is an entrepreneurial family office that invests its own capital in middle market software and tech-enabled services companies. With entrepreneurial roots and proven operational and investing experience, GSV works with select independent co-investing partners to build platforms of technology companies that revolutionize the industries they serve. Headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, GSV provides access to capital and operational support to midmarket technology firms all over the world. To learn more, visit GreaterSumVentures.com.

Media Contacts:

For Lightyear:
Elliot Sloane
(917) 291-0833
esloane@throughlineco.com

For Oak HC/FT:
Michelle Daubar
(617) 803-1707
michelle@oakhcft.com

For GSV:
Kristin Alm
(865) 850-6087
kristin.alm@greatersumventures.com

For Therapy Brands:
mediainquiries@therapybrands.com

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Pliant Raises $10M in Series A Funding

New Stack Ventures

Today, Pliant announced that it has secured $10 million in Series-A financing led by Osage Venture Partners, with participation from Madrona Venture Group and existing investors New Stack Ventures, Gutbrain Ventures, VT Technology Ventures, Timothy McSweeney, BrightCap Ventures, Newfund Capital, Azure Capital Partners, and Leading Edge Ventures. As part of this financing, Osage Venture Partners Managing Partner Robert Adelson has joined the Pliant Board of Directors.

The new funding will be used to invest in Pliant’s go-to-market operations spanning sales, marketing, alliances, and customer success, as well as development initiatives in support of the company’s product roadmap.

 

“The Pliant IT Automation and Orchestration Platform delivers highly differentiated solutions in an exciting and rapidly growing space,” said Robert Adelson, Managing Partner of Osage Venture Partners.

“We are very impressed by the company’s proven ability to deliver meaningful value to leading brands in such a short period of time.”

 

“I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of the Osage Venture Partners family,” said Vess Bakalov, Founder and CEO of Pliant.

“We have built a strong business with a small, dedicated, and driven team. In the last year alone, we have made incredible progress in product development, new customer acquisition, and customer success. This investment will help us staff up to accelerate a new phase of rapid growth.”

 

Congratulations to Pliant!

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Swarmia raises $8M Seed to help software development teams deal with data

Lifeline Ventures

Swarmia, a B2B SaaS company for software development teams dealing with data, has raised a €5.7 M Seed round and a previously unannounced 1M€ pre-seed round, taking its raise to €6.7M ($8M). The Seed round was led by Alven Capital and joined by Jigsaw VC, Irena Goldenberg, Alex Algard, Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, Jonathan Benhamou and Romain Huet. Lifeline Ventures, the sole investor in a previously unannounced 1M€ pre-seed round, also participated. The cash wil be used to scale to the US.

Founder Otto Hilska is a serial entrepreneur who started Flowdock (team collaboration product, acquired by Rally Software) and was Smartly.io’s Chief Product Officer.

Hilska says many software development organizations could be much more successful if they had a “better visibility to their work and a systematic approach for continuous improvement”.

Swarmia integrates with development tools such as GitHub, Jira, Linear and various CI tools to “create a holistic view to the engineering teams’ inner workings.”

Competitors include Pluralsight Flow (raised $192.5M) and CodeClimate Velocity ($15M).

However, Hilska says: “We’re the only product in the market that’s actually used by developers themselves. We don’t build features for stalking individual developers, but rather focus on how the team can improve. We’ve built the product together with our pilot customers (with shared Slack channels and daily iteration) to make sure that it actually scales with them. Every team is different, and our product adapts to these different ways of working by letting teams define their Working Agreements. That leads to much better data quality, since we actually understand how the teams work – while competitors are happy to plot any incorrect data. Our Slack bot also helps teams drive the behavioral change when teams choose to adopt a working agreement.”

Thomas Cuvelier, Partner at Alven commented: “Software is eating the world but software engineering, the largest cost center of the modern organization, is still a black box. Swarmia solves a considerable pain point by bringing visibility to engineering work and helping executives make the right business decisions based on data rather than anecdotal evidence. What Otto and his team have achieved so far is impressive and they’re well on their way to drive better working habits for the world’s 27m developers.”

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EQT Private Equity to sell StormGeo to Alfa Laval

eqt
  • EQT Private Equity to sell StormGeo, a global provider of software-based decision support for weather sensitive operations, to Alfa Laval at a transaction price of NOK 3,630 million
  • StormGeo’s weather intelligence contributes to safeguarding people, assets and operations, and helps its customers achieve greenhouse gas targets and reduce emissions, with more than 2.0 million tons fuel and 6.1 million tons CO2 saved since 2018
  • During EQT’s ownership, StormGeo has more than doubled revenues, EBITDA and number of customers as a result of strong organic growth, investments in digitalization and a number of strategic add-on acquisitions

EQT is pleased to announce that the EQT Mid Market fund (“EQT Private Equity”) has agreed to sell StormGeo Holding AS (“StormGeo” or “the Company”) to Alfa Laval AB (“Alfa Laval”), a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation and fluid handling. The transaction price amounts to NOK 3,630 million.

StormGeo was founded in 1997 in Bergen, Norway, as a spin-off from Norway’s largest commercial broadcaster, TV2. Through its scalable software solutions, StormGeo provides weather-centric services to more than 2,200 customers globally in a variety of industries, including shipping, energy and onshore industries such as healthcare, hospitality, insurance and retail.

With extreme weather being the number one cause of business disruptions globally, StormGeo’s point specific forecasts, coupled with asset specific data, enable customers to safeguard people, assets and operations while minimizing downtime, improving ESG performance, saving fuel and resources.

During EQT Private Equity’s ownership, StormGeo has transformed from a regional champion into a leading global provider of shipping- and weather-solutions, underpinned by a proprietary and automated data platform. Fueled by global megatrends such as climate change and digitalization, StormGeo has more than doubled revenues, EBITDA and number of customers, and the Company’s platform has been significantly strengthened through investments in digitalization and six strategic add-on acquisitions. In 2018, StormGeo was elected a UN Global Compact Partner and has since proudly contributed to the Action Platform for Sustainable Ocean Business.

Rikke Kjær Nielsen, Partner and Investment Advisor at EQT Partners said, “It has been a privilege to partner with StormGeo’s management team and take part of the growth journey. We are proud of the company’s contribution to society in helping clients act sustainably and facilitating a reduction of 6.1 million tons CO2 since 2018. This aligns perfectly with EQT’s investment approach, and StormGeo is a strong testimony to EQT’s purpose of making a positive impact. I would also like to thank DNV and all the other minority co-investors in StormGeo for a great cooperation over the past few years. We are confident that Alfa Laval will be a great new home for StormGeo, and together, they will continue to be a trusted partner to businesses worldwide.”

Søren Andersen, CEO of StormGeo, further commented, “Together with EQT, StormGeo has transformed into a global market leader through accelerated investments in digitalization and several strategic add-on acquisitions. We are grateful for the strong cooperation and support from EQT over the past years, and we now look forward to continuing to develop our business through further geographic- and technological expansion together with Alfa Laval.”

The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2021.

EQT Private Equity was advised by Houlihan Lokey (M&A), EY (financial, tax, commercial, ESG, tech) and Wiersholm (legal).

Contact
EQT Press Office, press@eqtpartners.com, +46 8 506 55 334

About EQT
EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with more than EUR 67 billion in assets under management across 26 active funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas with total sales of approximately EUR 29 billion and more than 175,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More info: www.eqtgroup.com
Follow EQT on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram

About StormGeo
StormGeo is a leading global provider of software-based decision support for weather sensitive operations. The company was founded in 1997 as a spin-off from Norway’s largest commercial broadcaster, TV2, and today provides weather-centric services for a variety of industries, including shipping, renewables, oil & gas, and onshore industries such as healthcare, hospitality and retail. The company is headquartered in Bergen, Norway and has 24 offices in 15 countries and approximately 515 employees.

More info: www.stormgeo.com

About Alfa Laval
Alfa Laval is active in the areas of Energy, Marine, and Food & Water, offering its expertise, products, and service to a wide range of industries in some 100 countries. The company is committed to optimizing processes, creating responsible growth, and driving progress – always going the extra mile to support customers in achieving their business goals and sustainability targets.

Alfa Laval’s innovative technologies are dedicated to purifying, refining, and reusing materials, promoting more responsible use of natural resources. They contribute to improved energy efficiency and heat recovery, better water treatment, and reduced emissions. Thereby, Alfa Laval is not only accelerating success for its customers, but also for people and the planet. Making the world better, every day.

Alfa Laval has 16,700 employees. Annual sales in 2020 were SEK 41.5 billion (approx. EUR 4 billion). The company is listed on Nasdaq

More info: www.alfalaval.com

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