Acronis is now owned by private equity after EQT bought a majority stake.
The Singapore-based backup software business is massive. It protects over 750,000 businesses across 150 countries, through more than 20,000 service providers offer Acronis Cyber Protect services. EQT is Europe’s largest private equity business. The cost of the stake was not revealed. Acronis founders, management, and existing investors will remain significant minority shareholders.
Acronis CEO Ezequiel Steiner put out a statement: “We are thrilled that EQT shares our vision for growth and supports our strategic expansion. With EQT as strong partner, we will continue Acronis’ expansion strategy and continue to deliver the very best service to Acronis’ partners and customers.”
Johannes Reichel, Partner and Co-Head of Technology within EQT’s Private Equity advisory team, said: “Acronis is a strongly positioned cybersecurity and data protection software platform with a clear value proposition to Managed Service Providers. EQT has followed the company’s journey for many years and continues to be impressed by its performance and innovative strength. We are very excited to partner with Acronis, the management team and existing investors on its next phase of growth.”
The roots of Acronis go back to 1997 when SWsoft was founded by Russian entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov (Serg Bell) as a privately held server automation and virtualization company. Web hosting and OS partition virtualization business Parallels was started up in 1999 by Ilya Zubarev and Serguei Beloussov. It developed virtualization technology for the Mac enabling MacOS to run Windows in a parallel partition.
Beloussov, Zubarev, and Stanislav Protasov then co-founded backup and disaster recovery provider Acronis in 2003 as a Parallels spin-off. Its TrueImage product dates from then and is sold by OEMs as a PC backup, recovery, migration and DR facility.
SWsoft bought Parallels in 2004. This had such a strong brand image that SWsoft changed its name to Parallels in 2008. Corel acquired Parallels in 2018. Virtuozzo, the sole remnant of SWsoft, is owned by a group including Serg Bell.
Acronis made its headquarters in Singapore in 2008 and then moved to Schaffhausen in Switzerland in 2014 to improve is effectiveness as a global business. Serg Bell was CEO from 2013 to 2021 and board chairman from 2013 to 2021. He is now Chief Research Officer and an executive board member.
Ezequiel Steiner became Acronis CEO in October 2023, taking over from Patrick Pulvermueller, who was CEO from 2021. Pulvermueller remained a board member and became a CEO advisor.
Acronis developed additional security and cloud-based offerings offerings with, for example, automation facilities for MSPs.
Blackrock and others invested $250 million in Acronis in 2022, valuing the company at $3.5 billion. A 51 percent majority ownership stake at that valuation would cost $1.785 billion. We suspect Acronis is valued at a higher amount than $3.5 billion in 2025. According to Reuters’ sources the valuation could be $4 billion.
Fellow backup and security company Veeam, also founded by Russian entrepreneurs, was bought for around $5 billion by private equity in 2020.
Serg Bell told us: “Today’s announcement is great progress. It has always been important for Stanislav and myself – the founders – to find a partner that aligns perfectly with Acronis’s culture and vision. A partner that is committed to accelerating the deployment of advanced, state of the art cyber protection and operations solutions across the world, while maintaining the highest standards of quality and partner service. With the amount and intensity of cyber threats constantly growing, we are confident that Acronis is uniquely placed to be the best platform for Service Providers to profitably protect and operate their customers’ information technology infrastructure
“As we celebrate this significant milestone for Acronis, we are also looking forward to devoting more time to advancing the fields of science, research and education with the team at Constructor Group which I founded in 2019. We are changing the delivery and accessibility of best science, research and education through Constructor Tech Platform. The Constructor Tech team is leveraging the tidal wave of generative AI and Metaverse to enable scientists, researchers, teachers, students and academic administrators to accelerate the technological breakthroughs that will help solve the world’s most pressing challenges. We are on the way to creating a world-renowned center of excellence for research and innovation at Constructor University graduating founders, CEOs and the C-suite leaders of tomorrow and Constructor Capital is funding and growing its deeptech, software and ed/science tech portfolio”
The EQT Acronis transaction is pending customary regulatory approvals and is anticipated to close in the first to second quarter period of 2025.
