CyberArk To Acquire Machine Identity Firm Venafi For $1.54B

The acquisition is the largest in CyberArk’s history, according to an analyst.

CyberArk announced a deal Monday to acquire machine identity specialist Venafi from private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $1.54 billion.

The acquisition is the largest in the 25-year history of identity security and access management firm CyberArk, according to Shaul Eyal, managing director for equity research at TD Cowen.

“If history is any guide, [CyberArk’s] strong M&A track record should serve it well with its largest [acquisition deal] ever,” Eyal wrote in a note to investors.

In an interview with CRN in November, CyberArk CEO Matt Cohen noted that machine identities — such as those belonging to devices and APIs — “outstrip human identities 40-to-1” in most enterprises.

Cohen said at the time that a major trend in identity security is “the integration of diverse identities into one platform,” including both human and machine identities.

That constitutes “the ability to be able to — from one single administrative portal, with common shared services — apply privileged controls” for all identities, he said.

Those include identities for “the workforce, for IT, for developers and for the expanded developer population, like data scientists and other roles like that — and non-human identities, machine identities,” Cohen said at the time.

In a news release on the agreement to acquire Venafi, CyberArk said the merger will “establish a unified platform for end-to-end machine identity security at enterprise scale.” Venafi’s technology enables discovery and management of machine identities in order to protect connectivity and communication involving those identities, according to CyberArk.

In the announcement, CyberArk said it will pay Thoma Bravo “approximately” $1 billion in cash along with about $540 million worth of its publicly traded shares.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year, and to bring about $150 million in additional annual recurring revenue to CyberArk, the company said.