Quip, a US-based advanced document processing technology developer and a portfolio company of Salesforce.com’s Salesforce Ventures unit, is set to be acquired by Salesforce, it revealed in a blog post yesterday.
The post did not disclose the purchase price, but a regulatory filing by Salesforce stated it will issue $582m in shares as part of the deal, which “two sources very close to the deal” told TechCrunch will be sized at $750m in cash and stock.
Quip has built a platform to create what it calls ‘living documents’, word processing or spreadsheet documents with built-in chat features so that a team can directly collaborate on their creation. Existing files can also be imported so that they can be worked on in this way.
The filing also confirmed Salesforce Ventures is one of Quip’s investors. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was among the investors in a $15m series A round in 2013 led by Benchmark Capital that also featured Greylock Partners and angel investor Yuri Milner, but the unit’s participation had not previously been disclosed.
The series A round was raised at a $79.7m pre-money valuation, according to Pitchbook Data. Greylock subsequently led Quip’s $30m series B round in October 2015, investing alongside Benchmark.
Quip co-founders Bret Taylor and Kevin Gibbs stated in the blog post: “Salesforce and Quip share the same philosophy about software: it should be in the cloud, built for the mobile era and be inherently social.
“Salesforce pioneered the shift to enterprise cloud computing – and Quip has been working since 2012 to reimagine a productivity platform for teams that allows them to be more connected, more collaborative and get more work done.”
The deal follows Salesforce’s $360m acquisition of another Salesforce Ventures portfolio company, quote-to-cash app developer Steelbrick, in December 2015.