Thoma Bravo acquires Proofpoint for $12.3 billion in the largest private equity deal in software history

Private equity deals are on the rise. Two years ago we told you about Proofpoint after it acquired insider threat management platform startup ObserveIT for $225 million in cash. ObserverIT develops tools to detect and manage insider threats. The acquisition of ObserveIT was the third for Proofpoint in Israel. Now, Proofpoint itself is being acquired by Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sector.

Yesterday, Proofpoint announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Thoma Bravo in an all-cash transaction that values Proofpoint at approximately $12.3 billion, making it the largest private equity deal in software history.

The announcement comes four days after Thoma Bravo closed its prior top cloud acquisition — the $10.2 billion purchase of RealPage, which serves the real estate industry.

Founded in 2002 by Eric Hahn, the Sunnyvale, California-based Proofpoint provides cloud-based email security, e-discovery, and compliance solutions for companies to protect sensitive business data. Since its inception nine years ago, Proofpoint has raised a total of $85.5M in funding over 6 rounds. Its latest funding was raised on Feb 26, 2008, from a Series F round.

Commenting on the acquisition, ProofPoint Chairman and CEO Gary Steele said: “Today’s announcement is a testament to the strength of Proofpoint’s people-centric approach to cybersecurity and compliance and underscores our important role preventing, defending, and responding to today’s threats.”

Steele added: “We have made tremendous strides in expanding the sophistication and scale of our offerings, and in 2020 we generated more than $1 billion in annual revenue – making Proofpoint the first SaaS-based cybersecurity and compliance company to reach that milestone. We believe that as a private company, we can be even more agile with greater flexibility to continue investing in innovation, building on our leadership position, and staying ahead of threat actors.”

Proofpoint helps companies around the world stop targeted threats, safeguard their data, and make their users more resilient against cyber attacks. Leading organizations of all sizes, including more than half of the Fortune 1000, rely on Proofpoint for people-centric security and compliance solutions that mitigate their most critical risks across email, the cloud, social media, and the web.