Big news today for LumApps, the French startup that has described itself as an “intranet superapp” with a platform for building and provisioning internal communications and apps for workforces. The company — which is used by some 5 million people across 700 organizations — announced that Bridgepoint, the private equity investment firm, is taking a majority stake in the company in what it is describing as a $650 million deal and strategic investment,
As part of the transaction, all of LumApps’ existing outside investors – they include growth divisions at Goldman Sachs, Eurazeo, Bpifrance, and IRIS – are expected to sell their stakes in the company. (Eurazeo, in its own statement, describes itself as a LumApps’ biggest investor with more than 30% of the company prior to the deal; it said it alone is netting gross sale proceeds of more than €210 million.)
LumApps’ founders — including Sebastien Ricard, the CEO — and senior management will stay on board and also keep stakes in the business. The transaction is expected to close in July 2024. The full valuation of the company, and the percentage stake that Bridgepoint is taking, are not being disclosed.
Its previous investors are seeing a nice win out of this deal, however, since LumApps was last valued at just $255 million at its most recent funding, according to PitchBook. The startup has been biding its time on what appears to be a lean operation: that last round, for $70 million, was way back in 2020.
The investment/majority acquisition will give LumApps a big nest egg to make acquisitions and scale its business. LumApps already works with a lot of large enterprises: they include the likes of big French enterprise titans like Airbus, Publicis Sapient, and Groupe Lafayette, but it also has a strong international business with customers based outside of France including Electronic Arts and Japan Airlines. The company that owns TechCrunch has also been a customer.
It integrates with hundreds of the usual suspects in enterprise productivity and IT. They include Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, Workday, ServiceNow, Zoom, Salesforce, Box, SAP SuccessFactors and more.
LumApps needs the investment to grow not least because it plays in what is a very competitive market serving business intranet needs, one that is addressed by a variety of players, from close competitors like Haystack to those that approach from specific areas like Workday from an human resources angle, or even Slack from workplace communications.
Notably it’s not a market for the faint of heart. One of Meta’s early incarnations for Workplace was to position it as a platform for intranet communications. Failing to find the right product-market fit and appetite to pursue enterprise internal comms, Meta will soon be shutting Workplace down completely.)
The infusion of funds could signal more M&A in this space. LumApps has been making acquisitions already: most recently acquiring Teach on Mars to bring in learning more natively to its platform.
Although AI has become very much a buzzword in enterprise tech these days, LumApps has had an ambition of building out an AI-powered personal assistant for years, and it seems that will be another major area of investment for it going forward. It will be putting more into the concept of a “generative AI companion” as well as micro-learning, it said in a statement.
