The 12 biggest take-private PE acquisitions so far this year in tech
Private equity firms have been busy this year -- here's a look at some of the biggest take-private deals so far in 2024.
The private equity realm has been pretty active so far in 2024, serving as a powerful “alternative” source of liquidity for technology startups and scale-ups in search of an exit. Just this month, TechCrunch reported that EQT had picked up a majority stake in cybersecurity firm Acronis at a valuation of around $4 billion, following in the footsteps of another exit, in which EQT snapped up enterprise middleware company WSO2 for $600 million.
However, private equity has also been busy in the public markets, with some big deals going down to transform underperforming companies with strong growth prospects. According to PitchBook, there were 136 take-private deals led by private equity firms in 2023, up 15% on the previous year. New data provided to TechCrunch by PitchBook indicates that so far in 2024, there have been 97 such deals, meaning we’re roughly on course to match last year’s figure (give or take) if the current trajectory holds.
Of the take-private deals that have closed so far in 2024, 46 belong to the technology sector. TechCrunch has filtered through these transactions to identify deals specifically focused on product-centric companies (rather than IT consultancies or services firms), and pulled out all the acquisitions valued at $1 billion or more.