The California-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo continues to make waves in the logistics sector, announcing today that it has completed its previously announced, $8 billion acquisition of Coupa Software, a provider of cloud-based, business spend management (BSM) technology for supply chain, procurement, and finance.
Coupa had previously been a publicly traded firm on the NASDAQ exchange, but now becomes a privately held company. Thoma Bravo made the deal by combining its own funds with “a significant minority investment” from a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).
The move marks the latest takeover for Thoma Bravo, which is one of the busiest firms in the investment sector, having acquired or invested in more than 420 companies over the past 20 years. Other logistics companies in the firm’s stable include Auctane, which Thomas Bravo has expanded quickly by combining it with other firms such as ShipStation, Stamps.com, ShipEngine, MetaPack, and Endicia. Thoma Bravo also owns the supply chain software firm Elemica and holds partial ownership of the logistics visibility platform vendor project44.
Coupa has also grown fast on its own accord, launching a $50 million venture capital fund in 2021 after it had paid $1.5 billion in 2020 to buy the supply chain software firm LlamaSoft.
"Coupa created the Business Spend Management category and is well-positioned to capitalize on this large and expanding global market," Holden Spaht, a Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo, said in a release. "Our partnership with Coupa will leverage Thoma Bravo's deep software expertise to help accelerate growth, drive continued investment in product innovation, and better serve the company's world-class customer community. We look forward to building on Coupa's strong track record of success."
