Pluralsight, backed by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, has acquired A Cloud Guru (ACG), which offers online training for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is technology M&A deal number 320 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2021.See all technology M&A deals for 2021 and 2020 listed here.
This is Pluralsight's second acquisition of 2021. The other deal involved buying Next Tech, a San Diego, California provider of cloud-based computing environments. Next Tech's platform enables the authoring and hosting of labs in software development, data science and machine learning.
A Cloud Guru offers certification courses, hands-on labs and sandboxes, exams and quizzes to focused on cloud services education. The platform has served more than 2.5 million learners and over 4,500 organizations. Buyer Pluralsight Skills also offers cloud courses and hands-on learning experiences.
Pluralsight Acquires A Cloud Guru: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the deal, Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight, said:
"Technology is the number one differentiator for all businesses and the technology skills of your team is what determines success or failure. Nowhere is that more apparent than with cloud technologie. To meet the needs of our customers and best support their cloud transformations, we are determined to deliver the most comprehensive solution for driving cloud maturity at scale. With the acquisition of A Cloud Guru, we can now provide an all-in-one solution to accelerate the cloud skill development journey for large enterprise customers and individual learners."
Added Sam Kroonenburg, Co-founder and CEO, A Cloud Guru:
"ACG and Pluralsight were founded to solve the same problem—closing the technology skills gap by democratizing access to technical education. Within our shared missions, we've taken different but complementary approaches. Both approaches have proven to resonate strongly with customers who want depth and breadth in tech education. I am excited by the next phase of our mission in which, together, we will build the next-generation platform for hands-on learning across all of technology."
Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners acquired Pluralsight for $3.8 billion in April 2021.
