ByteDance Valuation Falls 26% to $223.5 Billion in New Employee Share BuybackRead more

Someone taking a photo of Cloudera signage when the company went public at the New York Stock Exchange in 2017. Photo by Bloomberg

Requiem for Cloudera and What It Means for Confluent IPO

Photo: Someone taking a photo of Cloudera signage when the company went public at the New York Stock Exchange in 2017. Photo by Bloomberg

Next time you feel the urge to buy stock of a fast-growing enterprise software company, remember Cloudera. Private equity firms KKR and Clayton Dubilier & Rice today unveiled a deal to buy the enterprise software company for $16 a share, $1 more than where Cloudera went public in 2017. Still, the offer price is a darn sight better than the $10-$12 level where Cloudera has lately been trading for the second half of last year.

The acquisition means that in two and a half years, the two public companies built on Hadoop open-source software have disappeared (a third Hadoop-based company, MapR, was absorbed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise). Also disappearing was their growth. Hortonworks went public in 2014, right before its annual topline growth slowed from 165% to 41% by 2017. Cloudera went public in 2017, as its growth rate was showing a similar trajectory. At the end of 2018 the two companies agreed to merge. At that point, the two companies together had a combined equity value of $5.2 billion. KKR said today’s acquisition of Cloudera is worth $5.3 billion.

Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photos by Getty.
Exclusive
Designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman Discuss AI Hardware Project
Jony Ive, the renowned designer of the iPhone, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
From left to right: Blair Effron, Robert Pruzan and David Handler. Photos by Getty; Tidal Partners.
Exclusive Finance
Disputes, Employee Misconduct Rattle Centerview’s Silicon Valley Dreams
The San Francisco Bay Area–based bankers at Centerview Partners, the investment bank that advised Silicon Valley Bank’s owner and Credit Suisse through recent turmoil, got two doses of bad news last week.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photos via Getty
Exclusive microsoft ai
How Microsoft is Trying to Lessen Its Addiction to OpenAI as AI Costs Soar
Microsoft’s push to put artificial intelligence into its software has hinged almost entirely on OpenAI , the startup Microsoft funded in exchange for the right to use its cutting-edge technology.
From left: Paul Graham, Garry Tan and Michael Seibel. Photos by Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan.
Exclusive startups ai
Y Combinator’s Garry Tan Goes to the Mat
Garry Tan was in his happy place. Surrounded by food trucks and techies basking in San Francisco’s September sun, the CEO of Y Combinator snapped selfies with entrepreneurs as he meandered through a crowd of 2,700 attendees at the startup accelerator’s annual alumni event.
Dave Rogenmoser, cofounder of Jasper. Photo via Getty.
Exclusive startups ai
Jasper, an Early Generative AI Winner, Cuts Internal Valuation as Growth Slows
Jasper AI, an early darling of the generative artificial intelligence boom, has cut the internal value of its common shares 20%, according to former employees who were notified by the company.
The X (formerly Twitter) office in San Francisco on July 29. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
policy
Musk’s X Cuts Half of Election Integrity Team After Promising to Expand It
Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter , is cutting around half of the global team devoted to limiting disinformation and election fraud on the platform, including the head of the group, according to three people familiar with the situation.