Accel, a global venture capital firm, and Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing, today announced that Accel has made a $500 million investment alongside Silver Lake and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) in the previously announced $12.5 billion acquisition of Qualtrics, the leader and pioneer of the Experience Management (XM) software category.
“As an entrepreneur, it’s incredibly important to have strong investors that believe in you and will help you write your story. And that’s the role Ryan Sweeney and Accel have played for Qualtrics – supporting our incredible growth and success over the past decade,” said Ryan Smith, Qualtrics Founder and Executive Chairman. “Accel’s continued partnership and renewed investment in Qualtrics is huge and it’s only going to make this next chapter of our story even more interesting and impactful.”
Qualtrics was bootstrapped until 2012, when Accel led the first outside investment. The firm led subsequent rounds of funding in 2014 and 2017 to fuel expansion. In 2019, on the eve of its IPO, the company was acquired by SAP, ultimately going public in 2021.
Today’s investment marks a major milestone for Accel. This is the firm’s largest investment in any company in its 40-year history and signals Accel’s continued belief in Qualtrics’s mission and team, and its conviction in the market opportunity this presents.
“We deeply value our longstanding relationship with Ryan, Zig and Qualtrics as one of their first institutional investors,” said Ryan Sweeney, Partner at Accel. “It’s been an exciting journey seeing Qualtrics grow as a durable business through each of their investment rounds, the IPO and now the take private. We are celebrating this full circle moment and are looking forward to our continued partnership with them and Silver Lake through their next phase of growth.”
“We are thrilled and honored to have Accel join us and CPP Investments as investors in Qualtrics,” said Egon Durban, Co-CEO of Silver Lake. “Ryan Sweeney and his team have a deep understanding of the business and we both believe in the tremendous opportunities Qualtrics can realize as the leader of the Experience Management (XM) software category. We look forward to working together as we aim to scale this platform, keeping high-growth technology innovation at the core and further expanding the value that Qualtrics delivers to customers across the spectrum.”
About Accel
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Bumble, CrowdStrike, Fiverr, Flipkart, Freshworks, Qualtrics, Scale, Segment, Slack, Spotify, Squarespace, Tenable, and UiPath are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 40+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses. For more, visit www.accel.com or www.twitter.com/accel.
About Silver Lake
Silver Lake is a global technology investment firm, with approximately $98 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of professionals based in North America, Europe and Asia. Silver Lake’s portfolio companies collectively generate more than $276 billion of revenue annually and employ approximately 710,000 people globally.
About CPP Investments
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments™) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Fund in the best interest of the 21 million contributors and beneficiaries of the Canada Pension Plan. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, investments are made around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. At March 31, 2023, the Fund totalled C$570 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter.
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