Private equity firm Permira acquires Squarespace after raising its bid to $7.2B; Squarespace sells restaurant reservation service Tock to Amex for $400M
Website builder Squarespace is no longer a publicly-traded company, after private equity firm Permira procured all remaining common stock in the firm.
Context & Ripple Effects
The closing follows Permira’s earlier proposal to take Squarespace private for roughly $6.9 billion, turning a proposed buyout into a completed ownership change. It also ends Squarespace’s run as a public company after its 2021 market debut.
The Tock divestiture completes a separate transaction announced in June, when American Express agreed to buy the restaurant-reservation business for $400 million. Squarespace had bought Tock for more than $400 million in 2021, making the sale a reversal of a prior expansion move.
First-order effects
- Permira becomes Squarespace’s owner and remaining common shareholders are bought out, removing the company from public trading.
- American Express takes ownership of Tock, while Squarespace no longer operates the restaurant-reservation service.
Second-order effects
- Squarespace enters private ownership with a narrower business perimeter after shedding Tock, giving Permira a more focused platform to manage outside public-market reporting.
- American Express becomes the new decision-maker for Tock’s product and commercial direction, shifting the reservation service from a website-builder portfolio to a financial-services owner.
Third-order effects
- The paired transactions illustrate how a take-private can coincide with portfolio simplification: an acquirer can inherit a more concentrated operating business rather than every asset accumulated during a company’s public-company expansion.
- If repeated across software and internet companies, this pattern could make private equity a more consequential owner of mature digital platforms while strategic buyers absorb their non-core vertical products; this single case alone does not establish a broad market shift.
The trend: This is one data point in the strategic-institution transition, where ownership changes and asset carve-outs reshape the boundaries of established digital platforms.