German software company SUSE Group is acquiring Cupertino, California-headquartered Rancher Labs Inc. in a deal that will help venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners strike an exit from its portfolio of US-based startups.
This is the first acquisition by SUSE since it became a fully independent software company in March 2019, it said in a statement. It didn’t disclose financial terms of the deal.
Nexus Venture had first invested in Rancher Labs in 2015 when the startup raised $10 million in a Series A funding round. The startup was founded in September 2014.
Rancher is part of Nexus Venture’s US portfolio. The VC firm has invested in more than 90 startups focusing on consumer retail, business services, healthcare, education as well as enterprise technology, according to its website. A large part of Nexus’ portfolio comprises startups based in the US but with some Indian presence.
Nexus Venture’s US portfolio includes three startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion. These are enterprise backup solutions provider Druva Inc., application programming interface testing platform Postman and mobile app software developer HeadSpin Inc. Its other US bets include HyperTrack Inc., Minio Inc. and Infoworks.io Inc.
SUSE said its acquisition of Rancher, which offers a Kubernetes Management platform, will create an organisation dedicated to powering digital transformation with open source and cloud native solutions.
The deal is likely to close before the end of October, subject to customary closing conditions.
SUSE was founded in 1992. It started off as a seller and developer of Linux products and competed with the likes of technology giants such as Microsoft and Adobe. It now develops open source container infrastructure software. In India, SUSE has offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi.
