Alteryx Inc. has agreed to be taken private by Clearlake Capital Group and Insight Partners in a deal worth $4.4 billion.

The transaction, which the company announced today, comes four months after reports first emerged that a sale may be in the works. The $4.4 billion that Clearlake and Insight are offering represents a 49% premium to Alteryx’s last unaffected market capitalization before its intent to pursue a sale came to light. The offer, which amounts to $48.25 per share, is also 29% higher than the Friday closing price of the company’s stock. Investment bank Houlihan Lokey advised Clearlake and Insight on the deal. 

Alteryx provides an analytics platform that organizations use to scan their business data for useful insights. The company launched the platform in 2006 and went public about a decade later, at which point its software was used by approximately 2,300 customers. Today, Alteryx has more than 8,000 customers, including IBM Corp., Salesforce Inc. and other major tech firms.

The process of turning raw business records into usable information comprises up to dozens of different tasks. The value proposition of Alteryx’s platform is that it provides tools for many of those tasks in a single, integrated offering. That avoids the need for data science teams to use a large number of disparate analytics products, which can ease their work.

The platform can aggregate business records from the systems where they’re usually stored into a centralized repository. From there, the software filters any errors the records may contain and changes their format if necessary to ease processing. Once the dataset is ready, users can run analyses as well as visualize the information with external tools such as Tableau.

Like many other enterprise software companies, Alteryx has spent the past few quarters enhancing its artificial intelligence capabilities. In May, it introduced a generative AI tool that can automate tasks such as turning the results of a data analysis project into reports. It also offers several features designed to ease the process of building custom neural networks.

The company generated $232 million in sales last quarter, up 8% from the same time a year ago. Its annualized recurring revenue grew nearly three times as fast in the same time frame, climbing 21%, to $914 million. Alteryx says that its planned sale to Clearlake Capital Group and Insight will help support its continued growth efforts. 

“In addition to delivering significant and certain cash value to our stockholders, this transaction will provide increased working capital and industry expertise, and the flexibility as a private company,” said Alteryx Chief Executive Officer Mark Anderson (pictured). “Together, we will make investments that matter most to our customers and accelerate our mission of harnessing the power of analytics to enable customers all over the world to transform data into a breakthrough.”

Insight Partners is known primarily for its startup investments, but the firm has also made a number of high-profile buyouts in recent years. Most notably, it acquired data protection provider Veeam Software Inc. in 2020 for $5 billion. Clearlake bought Dell Technologies Inc.’s former Quest Software subsidiary the following year for $5.4 billion. 

The investment firms expect to close the acquisition of Alteryx in the first half of 2024.

Photo: Alteryx