Chef, a US-based software development technology provider backed by corporates Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Citi, agreed yesterday to a $220m acquisition by software development tool producer Progress.
Progress will pay the full sum in cash and the deal is expected to close next month. It follows $105m in equity funding for Chef.
Founded in 2008 as Opscode, Chef has built a product suite to automate the building, deployment, management and securing of software applications.
The company made its product offering open source in April 2019 but offers a dedicated enterprise version on a subscription basis, generating more than $70m in annual recurring revenue.
Progress anticipates Chef’s technology will complement its own application development and deployment offering. The deal also forms part of a strategy where Progress is looking to add scale and cash flow through strategic acquisitions.
Chef’s last funding came when it closed a $40m series E round that included Citi Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of financial services firm Citi, in 2015.
The round also featured Hewlett Packard Ventures, but Chef is now part of Hewlett Packard Pathfinder’s portfolio. The latter is the corporate venturing arm of enterprise IT services firm HPE, set up after computing technology producer Hewlett Packard split into two businesses.
DFJ Growth led the series E round, while Millennium Technology Value Partners, Battery Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ignition Partners and ScaleVP also invested.
Citi Ventures had already taken part in a $32m series D round for the company in 2013, investing alongside Battery Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, DFJ, Ignition Partners and Amplify Partners. Its earlier funding came from Ignition Partners, Battery Ventures and DFJ Growth (then known as Draper Fisher Jurvetson).
