$200M acquisition by Minneapolis company will help it aid other firms make deals

A $200 million acquisition by a Minneapolis-based company will likely help mergers and acquisitions for other firms as activity rebounds.

The move is part of a $500 million investment by the largest shareholder of the technology company Datasite.

Concerns over tariffs and the overall economic uncertainty this year has put a damper on M & A deal activity.

Economists had been bullish about M & A this year as President Donald Trump took office. However, as Trump announced his tariff plan and the economy overall was uncertain, the deals have not yet come.

Deals fell in April to the lowest level in more than 20 years, according to data compiled by Dealogic for Reuters.

Yet many advisers have said their clients are ready to make some acquisitions when the economy settles.

Datasite’s latest acquisition will allow the company to expand its services once activity picks up.

Datasite acquired New York-based Grata, a software company powered by AI that provides private market companies with business intelligence and information needed to make mergers and acquisitions.

“This landmark combination creates a unique market intelligence offering for enterprises globally,” Rusty Wiley, CEO of Datasite, said in a news release.

The $500 million investment by London-based private equity firm CapVest Partners allowed the deal, the company said.

Datasite offers technology services such as allowing “virtual data rooms” where prospects in a merger transaction can securely share information, set permissions on who can read certain documents and tracks who reads them.

Datasite helps facilitate over 55,000 transactions a year.

Datasite plans to use part of the remaining $500 million investment on additional generative AI tools that can quickly, securely and accurately leverage the data it collects across the platform helping customers to achieve better deal outcomes. Datasite might also use the funding for more deals of its own.

“Utilizing some of our AI tools, we’ve reduced the execution time of a deal by 49 days,” said Doug Cullen, chief product and strategy officer at Datasite.

Grata adds more AI expertise. Driven by artificial intelligence, Grata specializes in taking private market workflows and combining them with propriety company data to help companies identify acquisition targets.

“Grata has comprehensive, accurate and searchable data on private companies,” Wiley said. “Combine that with the Datasite Group’s anonymized and aggregated insights — and you’ve got an unmatched powerhouse of market intelligence.”

Grata will operate as a business unit of Datasite with Grata co-founders, Andrew Bocskocsky and Nevin Raj, staying to run the unit.

CapVest first invested in Datasite in October 2020 when Datasite had 750 employees across 25 locations, including Minneapolis, in 13 countries.

With Grata, Datasite now has 2,000 employees and it is facilitating deal activity in approximately 180 countries.

Datasite is a private company and did not disclose annual revenue but says it has been growing by about 20% a year since CapVest’s initial investment in 2020.

North American deal activity was down sharply in April as companies paused activity while watching how the tariff situation pans out. But according to Cullen activity on Datasite Prepare, a tool on the platform that allows companies to prepare internally and with advisers for future deals, it picked up 28% recently, a sign deal activity may rebounding.