Perforce Software, a Minneapolis-based company that offers tools for developers, will acquire Portland, Ore.-based cloud automation company Puppet. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2005 by Luke Kanies, Puppet helps customers develop cloud-based infrastructure that automates various parts of a multi-cloud environment. The 500-person company has raised more than $170 million to date, according to PitchBook, including a $40 million debt round in July 2020.
Puppet is now led by Yvonne Wassenaar, who took over in 2019 after stints at VMware, New Relic, and Airware. Wassenaar was a finalist for CEO of the Year at the GeekWire Awards in 2020.
In a statement, Wassenaar said the deal with Perforce will help Puppet “service the breadth of DevOps needs our customers.” She expanded on the deal in a blog post, noting that she thought Puppet would be one of the “great IPOs to come out of the Pacific Northwest.”
“But what matters long-term is not what financial milestones fuel a company’s growth,” Wassenaar wrote. “What matters long-term is that we continue to empower our customers to be leaders in their markets and that we provide our team members with some of the best years of their careers. This is what we have the potential to do with Perforce in a way that we could not have done on our own.”
TechCrunch reported that Puppet was trying to raise more capital to help fuel acquisitions, but ended up doing the deal with Perforce instead.
Kaines, who stepped down as CEO in 2016 but remains a Puppet board member, commented on the deal in a Twitter thread.
“I’m frankly not a huge fan of acquisitions,” he wrote. “Too many of the corporations in our world are already too big. But this was the right outcome for Puppet and its people. Perforce will be a great home, and we’ll help them as much as they’ll help us.”
Perforce was founded in 1995 and was acquired by Clearlake Capital in 2018. It employs 1,200 people.
“This acquisition expands our product offering by adding new capabilities for enterprise DevOps teams to manage and secure their critical infrastructure,” said Mark Ties, CEO of Perforce, in a statement.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
