Before we start, a warning: buckle up, readers, because we have a great (and long) list of M&A deals that are relevant for the Boston ecosystem this month.
We tracked 11 deals, including a massive acquisition that reportedly created a giant in the cryptocurrency space (Circle scooping up Poloniex for $400 million) and another huge deal in the remote connectivity space (LogMeIn acquiring Jive Communications for $342 million).
Sadly, we have two items to report in "The Shuttered" department: a definitive confirmation that Mylestone shut down two months ago and a farewell to pet care startup Baroo.
For more context on Boston M&A deals, don't forget to check out our previous editions of BostInno Departed and our latest editorial mini-series Failure Week, which includes a look back at five Boston startups that shut down. For timely M&A news, there's our daily newsletter The Beat (subscribe here).
Here are the BostInno Departed from February 2018:
The Shuttered:
• In early February, CEO Dave Balter confirmed that his startup Mylestone shut down in December. Balter stepped aside from Mylestone to focus more on his new cryptocurrency investing service, Flipside Crypto.
• Baroo, a Boston-based pet care startup, shut down operations after expanding to five major markets and having raised $3.5 million from investors. Lindsay Hyde and Meg Reiss, Baroo’s co-founders, announced the news in a note to customers on the company's website.
The Merged And Acquired:
• Niantic, the maker of the popular Pokemon Go augmented reality app, has acquired Escher Reality, a Boston software startup that focused on persistent, multiplayer AR experiences.
• Techstars alum Codeship, which makes developer tools for continuous delivery and integration of code, has been acquired by CloudBees, another company in the DevOps space, Xconomy reported.
• Boston-based LogMeIn has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Jive Communications, a private provider of cloud-based phone systems based in Utah. LogMeIn is expected to pay $342 million in cash upon close, plus up to $15 million upon the achievement of specified milestones. Also, the public company announced that it had sold Xively, its IoT connectivity platform, to Google for $50 million.
• Fitbit announced it will acquire MIT spinout company Twine Health, giving the San Francisco-based wearable company a way to expand its offerings to health plans. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
• Nonprofit company Harvard Student Agencies has scooped up a market research startup to be added to its portfolio of 15 student-led businesses: Campus Insights, a startup born out of Boston College.
• Carbonite has agreed to buy Mozy, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, for $145.8 million in cash.
• Everbridge announced that it has reached a deal to acquire a Norway-based competitor, Unified Messaging Systems, for $33.6 million in cash, Xconomy reported.
• Bynder, a marketing tech startup that kicked its employees out of the office for one week last year, announced it has acquired Webdam, the digital asset management business of Shutterstock, for $49.1 million.
• Boston-based fintech startup Circle has become a giant in the cryptocurrency space with its reported $400 million acquisition of Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange. According to Fortune, the two companies combined have a revenue of $250 million in the past three months.
• Humatics, a Cambridge-based startup developing “microlocation” technology, has acquired 5D Robotics, a Carlsbad, Calif.,-based company, along with its subsidiary, Time Domain, a 31-year-old company based in Huntsville, Ala., that develops ultra wide-band technology.
• Amazon is buying "smart doorbell" company Ring for over $1 billion. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., the company was founded by Babson College graduate Jamie Siminoff. In February, we also discovered that the tech giant reportedly paid $90 million for its December acquisition of Blink, an Andover-based home security camera maker that had raised about $20 million in funding.
If you think there’s a startup missing from this list, email me at lmaffei@americaninno.com
