Swedish investment firm EQT is acquiring a majority stake in Acronis International GmbH, a major provider of cybersecurity and backup software.

The companies announced the deal today. They didn’t disclose the size of the investment, but detailed that it values Acronis at more than the $3.5 billion the software maker was worth following a 2022 funding round. Existing investors are set to stay aboard as “significant minority shareholders.” 

“We will continue Acronis’ expansion strategy and continue to deliver the very best service to Acronis’ partners and customers,” Acronis Chief Executive Officer Ezequiel Steiner wrote in a blog post. 

Switzerland-based Acronis provides a cloud platform designed to ease the work of MSPs, or managed service providers. Those are companies that help other organizations maintain their information technology infrastructure. MSPs can use the Cyber Protect Cloud, as Acronis’ platform is called, to protect the infrastructure they manage from cyberattacks and back up the data it contains.

The Cyber Protect Cloud relies on artificial intelligence algorithms to uncover hacking attempts. It can spot, among other threats, malicious files built specifically to avoid detection by antivirus tools. Acronis says the platform breaks down files into their components to detect embedded cybersecurity risks such as malicious links. 

The service ships with an AI assistant that allows administrators to investigate breaches with natural language prompts. According to Acronis, the chatbot also suggests ways of remediating those breaches. To further reduce manual work for users, the platform includes an automation engine that can perform some repetitive tasks without any manual input. 

The breach prevention features are integrated with a set of backup and recovery tools. According to Acronis, the platform backs up updates to business documents immediately after they’re made to prevent data loss in the event of an outage. The Cyber Protect Cloud also allows companies to create standby infrastructure that can be quickly brought online if their servers go offline. 

The MSP market is not the only segment that Acronis targets with its platform. The company also sells scaled-down versions of the software for consumers and small businesses. One of the newest additions to Acronis’ product portfolio, Cyber Protect for Enterprise, provides a set of backup and recovery tools geared to large organizations’ internal IT teams.

The company says its software protects more than 750,000 organizations worldwide. According to TechCrunch, Acronis was profitable as of 2021. That was presumably one of the reasons that EQT is investing in the company at a premium to its 2022 valuation. 

Acronis expects to close the transaction in the first or second quarter of 2025.

Image: Acronis