SUSE Sold for $2.5 Billion

SUSE is like a seasoned football player who changes ownership after a few successful seasons. This time the Swedish group EQT is buying SUSE from British-owned Micro-Focus. This is the fourth sale of SUSE since its inception in 1992, a year after Linus Torvalds announced the Linux kernel.

What’s different this time is that SUSE is being acquired by an investment firm and not a tech company. SUSE CEO, Nils Brauckmann, sees this as a move towards independence, with the company charting its own course instead of being a business unit of another tech company. “By partnering with EQT, we will become a fully independent business,” said Brauckmann. “Together with EQT, we will benefit both from further investment opportunities and having the continuity of a leadership team focused on securing long-term profitable growth combined with a sharp focus on customer and partner success.”

SUSE is well aware of the fact that the open source community will be keeping a close eye on this development. In a Hangout chat, Richard Brown, openSUSE Board Chairman, and the face of openSUSE community, told me that he received a phone call from Brauckmann updating him with the news and also reassuring him that nothing will change when it comes to open source and community engagement.

“As a SUSE employee, I’m excited about my employer’s new owners. As an openSUSE Contributor, I’m not only excited, but thrilled at the proactive steps SUSE has taken to reassure the community, which really shows just how well SUSE understands how to operate as part of the open source world,” Brown said.

In case you are curious, EQT is an investment firm with approximately EUR 50 Billion in raised capital across 27 funds. EQT has portfolio companies in Europe, Asia, and the US with total sales of more than EUR 19 Billion and approximately 110,000 employees.