The news: Donuts, a domain name registry based in Bellevue, Wash., has been acquired by Ethos Capital, a private equity firm based in Boston. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ethos Capital previously invested in Donuts last year.
What Donuts does: Founded in 2010 by Paul Stahura, the company sells 242 “top-level domains” including .social, .support, .email, and more. It manages nearly 25 million domain names. The company is led by Akram Atallah, a former executive at internet nonprofit ICANN. It has about 300 employees across four global offices.
Latest deal: Donuts was acquired by Abry Partners, another firm based in Boston, three years ago. Ethos Capital co-CEOs Fadi Chehadé and Erik Brooks previously worked at Abry; Brooks launched Ethos in 2019.
In 2017, Donuts raised a $110 million investment to help complete the acquisition of fellow domain company Rightside Group. The company acquired domain registry operator Afilias in December. Other backers of Donuts include Adams Street Partners; Austin Ventures; Emergence Capital; Generation Partners; TL Ventures; and Stahurricane.
