Startups

These 6 DC tech exits since 2014 were worth nearly $2 billion

A look at some of the biggest and most recent D.C. tech acquisitions shows just how fast the momentum is building here.

EMC was recently acquired by Dell. Before that it was a major acquirer, too. (Photo by Flickr user Bob Mical, used under a Creative Commons license)
One of the measures of a tech business community’s health is its list of recent acquisitions.

Is the ecosystem growing businesses that are attracting the interest of larger companies?
For the District, some of its biggest acquisitions have come recently. It’s a city where still more than a quarter of its residents work for the federal government but greater familiarity is coming to its flourishing tech scene. There are few clearer measures of that momentum than the recent big tech exits that have happened in and around D.C., the city with the second highest tech job growth in 2013.
While tech exits in Delaware have the slower pace of biotech and Philadelphia has a long history of big-name buyers for enterprise solutions that come around less regularly, acquisitions from D.C. have come fast and furious in the last two years.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it gives some insight into the appeal of D.C.’s tech market. If we missed something, remind us in the comments.

1. Speek acquired by Jive Communications (July 2015)
2. Virtustream acquired by EMC Corporation (May 2015)
3. Applied Predictive Technologies acquired by MasterCard (April 2015)
4. FoundationDB acquired by Apple (March 2015)
  • FoundationDB, a D.C. tech scene darling, was acquired by Apple last March for an undisclosed amount. The NoSQL database company shut down all downloads after the buy and closed their GitHub page, causing some backlash. In 2009, FoundationDB was founded on $1 million in seed money and eventually raised a total of $22.7 million.
5. HelloWallet acquired by Morningstar (May 2014)
6. Parature acquired by Microsoft (January 2014)
  • Microsoft acquired Parature to “add world-class customer self-service capabilities to further accelerate the Microsoft Dynamics vision of helping organizations deliver amazing customer experiences,” according to Microsoft a statement at the time. The purchase price came in at $100 million and followed a previous 2009 partnership the company had with Microsoft.
Companies: Apple
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