Exit despite Corona: National Instruments acquires Israeli Optimal Plus for $ 365 million in cash

National Instruments Corporation (NI) acquires Israeli software company Optimal Plus for $ 365 million in cash. To date, the Israeli company founded in 2005 by Danny Glotter has raised $ 80 million, among others from the US investment fund KKR, Israeli venture capital funds Pitango, Viola Ventures, Spring Ventures, Vintage Scandi and Evergreen as well as private investors Kenneth Levy, Chairman of KLA. The acquisition is scheduled to close in the third quarter of 2020.
The acquiring company trades on NASDAQ for about $ 5 billion and employs about 7,300 employees among others in its Texas center.
Danny Glotter, the company's founder and CEO, will step down as the deal closes. "We still have a month-to-month process of closing the details, so that we can become the company's business center in Israel. As mentioned, I will not remain in the company, after the closing I will leave. National Instruments greatly appreciated our company's strong management team. I will continue to advise them in the near future, "Glotter told Calcalist.
"We were able to fulfill our ambitions," he added. "In the manufacturing world we were only in the semiconductor field and now we are a significant player in the automotive world as well. The Corona create a new opportunity. In 2019, we were very interested in it and then the Corona came. I wondered if I preferred birds to the tree or grab one by hand and made a decision. "
Optimal Plus, which has developed a system that connects to chip production lines and performs analysis for valid chips, has $ 51 million in revenue in 2019 and employs about 240 people, most of them in the company's offices in Holon. The company's board of directors includes Gloucester Shlomo Spokesman Moyola, Aharon Mankowski of Pitango, Yahel Zilka of Magma, former Israeli Dadi Perlmutter of Intel and more. Optimal Plus's customers include the world's leading chip companies such as TSMC, Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD, Marvel and Nvidia. Nir Erez, CEO of Mobit was one of the founders of the company and currently holds a few percent.
Glutter explained that in the Corona, what matters is not just who is known and who is not. "We did not take out workers to the USSR, we did not even dismiss the cleaner even though she had nothing to clean. Employee retention was very important to us. We received a huge hug from the employees with great appreciation and that is what makes the good connection to the buyer. When they came from NI, they looked at the height of their eyes when they told us that they wanted to enter this field in the country. Although NI is not a recognized company in Israel, it has 30,000 customers and thousands of aerospace products and other fields, which is a very good connection for us and Israel, "says Glotter.
The last investor in the company was the US investment fund KKR, which invested $ 40 million in the company in 2015. Talking to Calcalist, two senior executives Lucian Schnefelder and Steven Shanley say, "We are very pleased that we have been able to help the company move forward and have helped Danny with our chip business. We have worked well with our Israeli partners. Optimal was our first investment. We invested a $ 700 million fund in Optimal and it was an investment. First and this is our first exit. It was a relatively small investment and it paid off for us very much. "
NI said: "Due to the nature of the complementary activities of the two companies, we anticipated operating savings as a result of duplication. Optimal develops software solutions for Big Data analytics for the chip, automotive and electronics industries. About their products, through data analysis, throughout the supply chain and every stage of product life. "
"NI testing systems are used for semiconductor manufacturing processes while Optimal Plus is a leading manufacturer of large data analytics solutions for this industry. In addition, NI's automotive manufacturing testing industry complements the data analysis solutions that Optimum Plus develops for this market. NI's strengths in solutions Software-based software, together with Optimus Plus's analytics solutions for large organizations, will enable both companies to generate insights from production and testing data, significantly reducing the time to market for new products, while maintaining product quality and reliability, while dramatically improving production efficiency.
Eric Starkloff, President and CEO of NI commented on the acquisition: "Adding Optimal Plus data analytics capabilities will allow us to accelerate NI's growth strategy by increasing the value we bring, at the enterprise software level, to common semiconductor and automotive customers. In this era, when many customers are in the midst of digital transformation, we remain committed to bringing innovative solutions and systems to the market that can leverage a robust data analytics platform to meet our customers' challenges. I congratulate all of the Optimum Plus employees for joining NI and look forward to the success of the company's long-term growth plan together. "