Zendesk goes private as $10.2 billion private equity acquisition completes

It’s been a difficult year for Zendesk after the San Francisco-based software company failed to buy Momentive, the owners of SurveyMonkey. Zenkdesk walked away from the proposed $4.1 billion deal in February to buy Momentive. At the same time, the software giant also turned down a $17 billion acquisition believing it was worth a lot more.

Today, Zendesk completed its sale to a group of private equity firms led by Hellman & Friedman and Permira in a deal valued at $10.2 billion after prolonged pressure from activist investor Jana Partners. The acquisition was previously announced in June. As part of the deal, Zendesk shareholders will receive $77.50 per share in cash.

Zendesk started out in 2007 with the goal of starting a customer experience revolution by enabling any business around the world to take their customer service online.

Today, Zendesk is the champion of great service everywhere for everyone, and powers billions of conversations, connecting more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers over telephony, chat, email, messaging, social channels, communities, review sites and help centers. Zendesk products are built with love to be loved. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark, built and grown in California, and today employs more than 6,000 people across the world.

Founded in 1984, Hellman & Friedman is a global private equity firm with investments in over 100 companies. The firm is currently investing its tenth fund, with $24.4 billion of committed capital, and has over $85 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2022. Learn more about H&F’s defining investment philosophy and approach to sustainable outcomes at www.hf.com.

We wrote about SurveyMonkey back in June 2021 after it announced it was rebranding to Momentive to reflect the future direction of the company. However, the name can be confusing to customers wanting to visit the company’s new website. Since Momentive.com is already an active website, instead the company went with Momentive.ai.