Investor Consortium Completes Acquisition of Momentive Global

An investor consortium led by Symphony Technology Group (STG) has completed the acquisition of Momentive Global, the maker of the survey platform SurveyMonkey, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.5 billion. The acquisition was first announced earlier this year on March 13, and was approved by a special meeting of Momentive shareholders on May 31.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, Momentive shareholders will receive $9.46 per share. With the acquisition now completed, Momentive common stock will cease trading, and the company will operate as a privately held firm. Momentive will remain headquartered in San Mateo, California.

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Momentive offers enterprise solutions for agile experience management and insights. STG is a private equity partner to market-leading companies in data, software, and analytics.

Zendesk to Lay Off Another 8% of Its Workforce

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Zendesk is reducing its workforce by another 8%, six months after the company laid off 300 staffers. Writing in an email to employees that was later posted as a blog, new Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier cited macroeconomic uncertainty and increased competition from rivals as the reasons for the layoffs. Zendesk enterprise customers were also considering the adoption of new AI technologies, Eggemeier noted.

Zendesk had laid off approximately 300 staffers from its global workforce of 5,450 in November—the same month that Eggemeier assumed the CEO mantle at the company—to reduce operating expenses after a two-year hiring spree from 2020 to 2022 outpaced growth. That first round of layoffs came after Zendesk was acquired in June 2022 by a consortium of private equity firms for $10.2 billion.

The new CEO said Zendesk’s new AI and conversational commerce solutions will help customers meet their goals, even as Zendesk fine-tunes its employee structure to adapt to challenges posed by new AI technologies, such as generative AI and ChatGPT.

Since October, technology companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have laid off employees. According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, the online tracker that monitors job losses in the technology sector, the latest tally shows 762 tech companies have laid off 205,428 workers so far this year, compared to 164,709 layoffs in 2022.

Capillary Raises $45 Million

Capillary Technologies, a provider of loyalty management and customer engagement technology solutions, has successfully closed its Series D funding round, raising $45 million from a consortium of global investors that includes Avataar Ventures and its limited partners Pantheon Ventures, 57 Stars, and Unigestion SA. Filter Capital and Innoven Capital also joined the round.

The new funds will be used to drive Capillary’s global expansion and support its mergers and acquisitions strategy in the wake of success achieved by the company. Founded in India and headquartered currently in Singapore, Capillary has experienced exceptional growth in the US, which now accounts for one-third of the company’s total revenue. Capillary’s expansion in the US began with its acquisition of Minnesota-based CX firm Persuade in 2021, and its purchase of Texas-based Brierley+Partners earlier this year signified a growing footprint in the North American market.

Capillary is an end-to-end, AI-powered customer loyalty software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. The solution, which is present in the US, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, is used by more than 250 brands, including Tata, Puma, Shell, Petron, Domino’s, and Marks & Spencer. Reaching more than 1 billion consumers and processing in excess of 5 billion transactions every year, the company enjoys the backing of Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, Avataar Ventures, and Filter Capital.

Bonterra to Acquire WeSpire 

Social good software company Bonterra has reached an agreement to acquire WeSpire, the provider of employee engagement software for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) teams. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Boston-based WeSpire offers a suite of integrated solutions to automate, track, and measure programs typically managed in a siloed and manual manner, leveraging behavioral science content and techniques that increase employee capacity and encourage participants to act.

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In welcoming WeSpire, Bonterra expands and accelerates its own offering and presence in the large and midsized CSR market. The integration of Bonterra’s grants management and employee-giving tools with WeSpire will also enable companies and nonprofit organizations of all sizes to transform their approaches to employee engagement, allowing them to deliver programs efficiently and power lasting change.

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Bonterra is the second-largest and fastest-growing social good software company in the world. The company’s solutions collectively support a network of more than 20,000 customers, including 16,000 nonprofit organizations and more than half of Fortune 100 companies.

Databricks Ventures Invests in Catalyst

Data and AI company Databricks Ventures is investing in Catalyst, the New York-based provider of a customer success platform, in a strategic partnership aimed at bolstering the value provided by both companies to their customers.

The size of the investment was not disclosed, but the partnership, which marks the first investment of Databricks Ventures into customer growth technology, will leverage the Databricks Lakehouse platform for Catalyst to unlock the value of data for the customers of both companies. For its part, Catalyst will deepen its product integration with Databricks, enabling Catalyst customers to integrate directly with data stored in Databricks Lakehouse and power Catalyst analytics.

Overall, the integration simplifies the user experience and enables customers to get more value from their existing investments in both Catalyst and Databricks. With Catalyst’s actionable workflows and UI powered by Databricks analytics, businesses will be able to unify customer data into one, comprehensive platform—driving stronger predictability and increasing net dollar retention.

“In this economic environment, customers are the number one asset to protect, expand, and multiply through data-driven automations,” says Edward Chiu, CEO at Catalyst. “By combining Databricks’ advanced analytics with Catalyst’s enterprise integrations and powerful workflows, organizations will now be able to tackle the most critical revenue gap facing businesses today: proactive customer retention and expansion.”