Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has agreed to buy the Utah-based training software specialist Pluralsight for $3.5 billion in cash, a small premium on its market cap at the time of the sale of $2.94 billion.
Founded in 2004, Pluralsight provides online training software-as-a-service (SaaS) that allows companies to offer employees bespoke training courses, or individual contributors to sign up to hone their IT skills. The enterprise version of the platform also comes with analytics, allowing HR and IT leaders to see where they have skills gaps and to identify training requirements for tech staffers. Pluralsight went public on the Nasdaq in 2018, seeing its stock price dip during the pandemic this year before rebounding to its IPO price this month.
“Today’s announcement is an exciting milestone for Pluralsight as we begin the next phase of our evolution,” Aaron Skonnard, cofounder and CEO of Pluralsight, said in a statement. “Through this partnership with Vista, we will be able to move faster and be more agile, accelerate our strategic vision and, ultimately, deliver deeper, more powerful solutions that help companies adapt and thrive in the digital age. We are relentlessly focused on helping enterprises improve and optimize their technology workforce and providing the most effective path to skills transformation for their technology teams.”
Vista focuses on investments in enterprise software companies and also counts the likes of Apptio, Datto and Jamf in its portfolio.
SOURCE Computer World
