Swiss Unicorn: Nexthink reaches valuation of USD 1.1 billion

Lausanne/Boston — Next­hink, the leading provi­der of digi­tal employee expe­ri­ence manage­ment soft­ware, today announ­ced a $180 million Series D funding round. This brings the company’s valua­tion to $1.1 billion.

The finan­cing round is led by the Growth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund of inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment firm Perm­ira, with parti­ci­pa­tion from exis­ting inves­tors such as High­land Europe and Index Ventures. Bruce Chizen, Senior Advi­sor at Perm­ira and former CEO of Adobe, joins Nexthink’s Board of Direc­tors. The company intends to use the proceeds from the finan­cing round to further acce­le­rate inno­va­tion, growth and global expan­sion, parti­cu­larly in the US.

Next­hink provi­des IT teams with a compre­hen­sive plat­form for mana­ging the digi­tal expe­ri­ence of enter­prise employees. This enables digi­tal employee bene­fits to be moder­ni­zed, relia­bly deli­vered, and proac­tively impro­ved. Accor­ding to a recent survey, 96 percent of tech­no­logy execu­ti­ves agree that mana­ging the enter­prise digi­tal expe­ri­ence with tech­no­logy is an essen­tial part of IT teams’ jobs. Still, more than a third (34%) rely on occa­sio­nal surveys to coll­ect rela­ted data, and nearly half (46%) don’t measure their employees’ digi­tal expe­ri­ence at all. Nexthink’s award-winning plat­form provi­des enter­prise IT with a cloud-based solu­tion that provi­des compre­hen­sive visi­bi­lity into employees’ day-to-day expe­ri­en­ces with tech­no­logy at the device, appli­ca­tion and network levels. The detailed analy­sis capa­bi­li­ties and visua­liza­ti­ons greatly faci­li­tate trou­ble­shoo­ting and enable IT teams to conti­nuously improve employee satis­fac­tion with IT and resolve issues within minutes.

Next­hink curr­ently employs nearly 700 people and plans to grow to 900 by the end of 2021 — across all major loca­ti­ons in Europe, India and the US. In the past fiscal year, the company contin­ued to grow rapidly, surpas­sing the $100 million mark in recur­ring reve­nue (ARR). The number of custo­mers has increased by more than 180 to now more than 1,000 compa­nies, inclu­ding global firms that use the soft­ware on more than eleven million workstations.

In 2020, Next­hink laun­ched nume­rous new products, inclu­ding the Remote Worker Expe­ri­ence solu­tion, Expe­ri­ence Opti­miza­tion for proac­tive support teams, and addi­tio­nal features for virtua­liza­tion and indi­vi­dua­li­zed IT support. In the Forres­ter New Wave™: End-User Expe­ri­ence Manage­ment, Q4 2020, Next­hink was reco­gni­zed as a market leader.

“The trend towards decen­tra­li­zed working has signi­fi­cantly acce­le­ra­ted the need for soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the digi­tal expe­ri­ence with IT in compa­nies. This is because a signi­fi­cant portion of employee inter­ac­tions are now comple­tely digi­tal,” says Pedro Bados, CEO and co-foun­­der of Next­hink. “We are facing a unique oppor­tu­nity to rede­fine now how compa­nies will provide digi­tal work­places to their employees in the future. We are deligh­ted to have found a new part­ner in growth inves­tor Perm­ira to accom­pany us on this exci­ting jour­ney. Bruce is an excel­lent addi­tion to our team. As CEO of Adobe, he has inspi­red milli­ons of users with visio­nary soft­ware and perma­nently chan­ged the way people work toge­ther. Toge­ther with him, we now aim to do the same with Next­hink at thou­sands of compa­nies worldwide.”

“Next­hink has seen rapid growth in recent years,” says Bruce Chizen. “With the shift towards decen­tra­li­zed and digi­tal working, the digi­tal expe­ri­ence with IT in compa­nies takes on a promi­nent importance for employee satis­fac­tion. With this round of funding, Next­hink is well equip­ped to reshape the role of IT for the world’s largest compa­nies and provide a plat­form for opti­mally aligned digi­tal workplaces.”

“Disrup­tive soft­ware provi­ders that help increase produc­ti­vity and employee satis­fac­tion in compa­nies are a key invest­ment focus for Perm­ira in the tech­no­logy sector. With its strong growth and tech­no­logy focus, Next­hink ther­e­fore fits perfectly into the stra­tegy of the Perm­ira Growth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund,” adds Pierre Pozzo, Prin­ci­pal at Permira.

The Perm­ira Funds’ invest­ment is from the Growth Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund I, which focu­ses on mino­rity invest­ments in high-growth compa­nies. The Perm­ira funds are among the largest soft­ware inves­tors in the world. Well-known invest­ments include Team­Viewer, a global plat­form for the digi­tal networ­king of people and machi­nes, Mirakl, a SaaS market­place plat­form, Zwift, a global online fitness plat­form for cyclists and runners, and Klarna, the leading inno­va­tive payment service provider.

The closing of this tran­sac­tion is sche­du­led for Q1. www.nexthink.com.

About Perm­ira

Perm­ira is a global private equity firm, was foun­ded in 1985 and advi­ses funds with a total volume of around USD 50 billion. The Permira
advi­sed funds invest in compa­nies for the long term with the aim of incre­asing the value of these compa­nies through sustainable growth. Perm­ira advi­sed funds have comple­ted more than 250 tran­sac­tions in four key sectors: Tech­no­logy, Consu­mer Goods, Services and Health­care. Perm­ira employs more than 250 people at 15 loca­ti­ons in Europe,
North America and Asia.

About High­land Europe
High­land Europe invests in extre­mely high-growth soft­ware and Inter­net compa­nies. Opera­ting as High­land Capi­tal Part­ners in Europe since 2003 and offi­ci­ally laun­ched in 2012, High­land Europe has raised over €1.8 billion and inves­ted in compa­nies such as Adjust, AMCS, Camunda, ContentS­quare, Feature­space, GetY­our­Guide, Huel, Jellys­mack, Malware­bytes, Matches­Fa­shion, NewVoice­Me­dia, Next­hink, Spot, Super­me­trics, WeTrans­fer, Wolt and Zwift. Highland’s total invest­ments in the U.S., Europe and China include 46 IPOs and compa­nies valued at more than $19 billion.

About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is an inter­na­tio­nal venture capi­tal firm based in London and San Fran­cisco that helps the most ambi­tious entre­pre­neurs turn bold ideas into global busi­ness. Index-backed compa­nies that are resha­ping the world around us include Data­dog, Drop­box, Elas­tic and Slack.