Relativity, the Chicago-based company that is widely acknowledged to be the market leader for e-discovery software, yesterday announced a definitive agreement for a strategic growth investment from Silver Lake, one of the world’s largest private equity technology investors.
Although the parties did not disclose the amount of the investment, The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal values Relativity at about $3.6 billion and makes Silver Lake its largest shareholder.
In addition, Silver Lake representatives will join Relativity’s board of directors. There will be no changes to Relativity’s management team.
Other shareholders of Relativity include its founder Andrew Sieja and private equity firm Iconiq Capital LLC, which invested $125 million in Relativity (then called kCura) in 2015.
In a statement, Relativity said that the investment will be used to help it accelerate growth, innovation and technology differentiation. This includes devoting additional resources to its AI-powered communication surveillance platform, Relativity Trace, a product used by financial institutions and corporations to detect regulatory misconduct such as insider trading and collusion.
The partnership will also support ongoing global expansion and reinforce recent major investments in its cloud technology across the EMEA and APAC regions, Relativity said.
“Silver Lake is one of the most respected voices in technology, and their investment in Relativity signifies their confidence in our commitment to innovate and deliver best-in-class technology across the industries we serve,” Mike Gamson, Relativity’s CEO, said in a statement.
“Relativity is not only the clear leader in software for the legal sector, but also an increasingly strategic company in enterprise technology generally, as proliferating data across multiple formats both on-premise and in the cloud need to be collected and analyzed for a wide range of compliance purposes,” said Joe Osnoss, managing partner of Silver Lake.
According to Silver Lake’s website, it has not made other investments in legal technology companies.
