Customer and employee experience company Qualtrics International Inc., which is dual headquartered in Seattle and Provo, Utah, has officially gone private.
On Wednesday, the company closed on its roughly $12.5 billion sale to private equity firm Silver Lake in partnership with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. With the closing of the deal, first announced in March, Qualtrics is no longer trading on the Nasdaq.
“I couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter for Qualtrics," Ryan Smith, Qualtrics founder and executive chairman, said in a news release.
With the close of the deal, Qualtrics has received $1 billion in new funding from a trio of investors, according to the release. The investors are venture capital firm Accel, an early investor in Qualtrics ($500 million); merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners ($250 million) and DFO Management, the family investment office of Dell CEO Michael Dell ($250 million). Accel's portfolio includes DocuSign, Dropbox and Groupon.
Qualtrics was founded in 2002. The company collects and analyzes data to improve clients' customer and employee experience. Qualtrics finds pain points in user experience, like a cumbersome step in downloading a new app, so clients can make the necessary adjustments. According to Qualtrics, the company has over 19,000 customers, including Kroger, Mastercard and BMW.
SAP announced plans in 2018 to acquire Qualtrics, just days before Qualtrics was set to go public, and the $8 billion deal closed in January 2019. Qualtrics spun out in January 2021 and went public on the Nasdaq. SAP was still the majority shareholder before the Silver Lake deal closed.
Qualtrics generated $1.46 billion in revenue last year, up from $1.08 billion in 2021. The company in January announced plans to cut about 270 workers, roughly 5% of its workforce. As of March, Qualtrics had roughly 6,000 employees, including about 1,000 based in Seattle.
Silver Lake, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, has more than $98 billion in assets under management. The firm has invested in Airbnb, GoodRx and SoFi.
Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin has kept his role post-acquisition, and the company is maintaining its dual headquarters.
"The support of some of the best tech investors in the world will fuel our vision, and we’ll grow experience management and support our customers in today’s evolving world," Serafin said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday.
