MSP backup service supplier N-able has acquired Adlumin after OEMing the company’s malware detection offering for many months.
N-able provides data protection and other services to more than 25,000 managed services providers (MSPs). Adlumin supplies a cloud-native security operations platform featuring managed detection and response (MDR) and extended detection and response (XDR). The acquisition cost serious money: $220 million in cash, approximately $16 million in N-Able shares (1,570,762 shares), plus up to $30 million in potential cash earn-out payments payable in 2025 and 2026, making up to $266 million. N‑able anticipates that this acquisition will be immediately accretive to annual recurring revenue (ARR) and cash flow by the fourth quarter of 2025.
John Pagliuca, N‑able president and CEO, stated: “Our customers have been telling us for some time that cloud-native XDR and MDR solutions are mission-critical to their ability to fully secure their customers and users – which solidified our decision to partner with, and now, acquire Adlumin.
“We’ve proven out customer demand with robust growth and we determined that we could scale our business faster if we owned it. I’m thrilled to formally welcome them as a part of N‑able. Their security operations platform fits perfectly within our Ecoverse vision for unifying security and unified endpoint management into a single platform, allowing us to build upon the success we’ve already achieved together.”
Adlumin was founded in 2016 by CEO Robert Johnston and SVP Timothy Evans in Washington DC. The name is Latin for “add light.” Adlumin software collects and indexes data from almost any source, such as network traffic, web servers, VPNs, firewalls, custom applications, and application servers, and uses machine learning to detect malware infestation. It alerts admin staff and helps with remediation.
The company has raised $101.3 million in publicly disclosed funding, with a 2016 seed round for $300,000, a 2020 A-round for $6 million, a 2021 B1 round of $25 million, and a 2023 B2 round for $70 million.
N‑able will incorporate Adlumin’s technology with its platform that combines security, unified endpoint management, and data protection services. With this acquisition, N‑able aims to scale its security portfolio and ARR from the existing partnership for its MSPs and internal IT teams. In its latest quarter, N-able reported $116.4 million in revenues, up 8.3 percent year-over-year, with a $10.8 million GAAP profit.
Adlumin CEO Robert Johnston said: “Joining forces with N‑able marks an exciting new chapter in our mission to deliver enterprise-grade security to businesses of all sizes. By combining our security operations expertise with N‑able’s comprehensive endpoint management platform, we believe we’re uniquely positioned to help IT professionals stay ahead of evolving threats while scaling their security practices. We’re excited to accelerate this shared vision as part of the N‑able team.”
William Blair analyst Jason Ader told subscribers: “We like this acquisition for a few reasons: It should be accretive to N-able’s long-term growth rate as it brings in-house a well-regarded MDR/XDR platform that is expected to grow ARR 60 percent this year, net of the N-able contribution (and in so doing allows N-able to better control its product destiny in the security space). Because N-able was already ‘OEMing’ the Adlumin offering, we see reduced execution and integration risk (i.e. N-able knows the product and the team well), and we see meaningful channel and geographic synergies – Adlumin is almost all North America today and mainly sells through VARs (i.e. to in-house IT departments), while N-able mainly sells through MSPs and about 45 percent of its revenue comes from outside North America.”
Ader added: ”Key risks for N-able include macro pressures (which can often disproportionately affect smaller businesses), competition from MSP-focused technology vendors such as ConnectWise, Datto-Kaseya, Barracuda, Acronis, Ninja, AvePoint, and Veeam, and MSP market consolidation (potentially shifting pricing power to MSPs over time).”
