Highspot’s merger with Seismic was completed Tuesday morning, ending the Seattle-based sales software company’s run as an independent business and folding one of the region’s biggest enterprise technology players into a San Diego-based rival.
The combined company is now operating under the Seismic name, led by Seismic CEO Rob Tarkoff. Highspot co-founder and CEO Robert Wahbe is expected to join Seismic’s board of directors, as announced in February. Permira, the private equity firm that has backed Seismic since 2020, remains the controlling shareholder.
The Highspot name isn’t disappearing entirely. Its product is now branded “Highspot by Seismic.”
Tuesday’s announcement named Seattle as one of the R&D locations — along with San Diego, Boston, Vancouver, Toronto, London and Hyderabad and other sites — where the combined company’s 700-plus product, engineering, data science and AI employees are based.
We’ve asked Seismic for more on the implications for Highspot’s workforce. At last count, the Seattle company employed 1,024 people, according to LinkedIn data, down about 5% over the past year. Highspot went through two rounds of layoffs in 2023 amid a broader tech slowdown.
The combined company has 2,500 customers and 3.5 million users, according to Seismic, and plans to invest more than $100 million a year in research and development.
Financial terms of the deal, originally announced in February, were not disclosed. Highspot had raised $650 million since launching in 2011. Its last publicly disclosed valuation was $3.5 billion, set in 2022 when it raised $248 million in a round led by B Capital Group and D1 Capital Partners.
Other backers included Madrona, ICONIQ Growth, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Tiger Global Management.
Highspot held the No. 1 spot on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top privately held tech companies in the Pacific Northwest, until the merger was announced in February. Companies come off the list after mergers and acquisitions that fold them into other entities. Everett-based fusion energy company Helion Energy took over at No. 1 in the March update.
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