Thoma Bravo is buying SailPoint Technologies, which helps businesses give employees secure access to remote working tools, for $6.9B
Leveraged buyout market is roaring back to life after a pause amid rising volatility and war in Ukraine — US private equity group Thoma Bravo …
Context & Ripple Effects
Thoma Bravo's $6.9B take-private of SailPoint lands mid-arc for the firm: it had just closed its $12.3B cash purchase of Proofpoint and was raising $35B for tech buyouts after a 2021 spending spree. Identity and access management — the category SailPoint sells into — was becoming a signature Thoma Bravo vertical, and the deal reopened the leveraged buyout pipeline after volatility and the war in Ukraine had stalled it.
The bet has since resolved: SailPoint returned to public markets in February 2025, raising $1.38B in an upsized IPO at $23 a share for a $12.8B market cap — nearly double the 2022 buyout price — validating the buy-fix-refloat model even as the Medallia handover to creditors showed the downside of the same playbook.
First-order effects
- SailPoint's public shareholders are bought out at $6.9B and the identity-management vendor joins a Thoma Bravo security portfolio that already includes Proofpoint, concentrating two major access-security franchises under one owner.
- The deal reopens large-cap software LBOs after a pause driven by market volatility and the Ukraine war, giving other take-private targets a live pricing reference.
Second-order effects
- Rival identity-security vendors now face a competitor shielded from public-market scrutiny and backed by the largest dedicated software buyout war chest, pressuring them toward their own PE deals or consolidation.
- Lenders and co-investors see a reopened leveraged-finance channel for enterprise software, resetting deal appetite after the 2022 freeze.
Third-order effects
- The SailPoint cycle — public company, $6.9B take-private, $12.8B re-IPO — points to public markets becoming a scheduled exit venue for PE-owned security software, with firms like Thoma Bravo acting as repeat owners rather than one-time acquirers.
- If the pattern holds, identity and access management consolidates into a handful of PE-orchestrated portfolios, shifting where security software innovation and pricing power sit relative to independent public vendors.
The trend: Enterprise security software is cycling between public and private ownership at scale, with Thoma Bravo's buy-refloat playbook — Proofpoint, SailPoint — setting the template for the sector's consolidation.