The largest tech IPO on Nasdaq in 2020 so far was completed yesterday as B2B market intelligence company Zoominfo (Nasdaq: ZI) raised $935 million at a company valuation of $8 billion. Not only did the company raise slightly more than planned, initially pricing its share in the $19-20 range, the company's share price rose 62% on its first day of trading from $21 to $34, giving a market cap of $13 billion.
Headquartered in the US, the company has an Israel development center in Ra'anana, employing 150 people. Zoominfo was founded by Israeli Yonathan Stern, who returned to Israel in 2004 to set up the Israel development center. Many of the company's senior executives are Israeli.
In 2017, Zoominfo was acquired by US private equity firm Great Hill Partners for $240 million. Last year Zoominfo was acquired by its major rival Discover.org for $800 million, whose founder and CEO Henry Schuck decided to rename his company after the acquired company - Zoominfo. By the end of its first day of trading on Nasdaq, its value had risen to $13 billion.
Schuck paid tribute to the work done in Israel in the success of the IPO. "The artificial intelligence and machine learning that helps power our platform sets us apart from our competitors, and much of that work has been done by our data science team in Ra’anana. We’re very proud to be a part of the Israeli technology community and employ some of the best and brightest talent in Ra’anana."
Zoominfo has developed a market intelligence platform for sales and marketing teams. The company's go-to-market intelligence platform delivers comprehensive and high-quality intelligence and analytics on 14 million companies, including advanced attributes, technologies used by companies, intent signals, and decision-maker contact information. Zominfo's software, insights, and data enable over 15,000 companies to sell and market more effectively and efficiently. The company operates on a subscription software as-a-service (SaaS) business model.
Zoominfo CTO Nir Keren heads the Israel development center. He said, "We at the Israeli office are thrilled to be part of the team to bring us to this day. As Henry Schuck said, much of that work in preparation for the IPO has been done by our team in Ra’anana and I am very proud of them. About 50% of the R&D, marketing and product management teams are located in Israel and we are eager to grow locally and continue to develop the technology that provides the most accurate and comprehensive go-to-market intelligence platform available."
There has been concern that Zoominfo's name can be easily confused with video conferencing giant Zoom, which has been the success of the Covid-19 crisis. Zoominfo likes to point out that it was founded in 2000 while Zoom was only founded in 2011.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 5, 2020
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