Brevo, the Paris-based scaleup providing customer management tools for small and medium businesses (SMBs), has raised €500m in secondary funding valuing the company over €1bn.
Launched in 2012, Brevo provides SMBs with a suite of sales and marketing tools to develop and manage customer relationships.
US investor General Atlantic and UK-based Oakley Capital co-led the fundraise and now hold 25% of the company’s shares each.
French VC Partech, which first invested in the business in 2017, fully exited the company. Historical investors Bpifrance and Bridgepoint partially exited and now hold 24% of shares in total. Brevo’s management and employees have become the company’s largest shareholder with 26% of shares.
The company has also raised an undisclosed amount of debt funding to carry out more M&A operations.
A secondary share sale
Brevo’s services include managing different communications channels like email and text, setting up marketing campaigns, carrying out data analytics to measure and understand customer engagement, and supporting sales teams to convert prospects into clients.
The scaleup counts over 600k clients, with the majority (70%) in Europe. It says it will report its second year of profitability in 2025 with €200m in annual recurring revenues (ARR) and over €30m in EBITDA.
Founder Armand Thiberge says the secondary share sale came as Brevo came “to the end of a cycle”, which brought the need to create liquidity for historical investors.
Given the unfavourable context for IPOs, the company decided to take to the secondary market. “It’s easier to find €500m in private equity than on public markets,” says Thiberge.
A public listing could take place some time in the next four-to-seven years, he added, and unlike many companies eyeing an IPO in the US Brevo would choose to remain at home.
“It will necessarily be in Europe,” says Thiberge. “We carry the message of digital sovereignty [...] It doesn’t mean we won’t have a presence in the US but we can do that while being listed in Europe.”
Doubling down on the US
Thanks to the additional debt funding and the company’s profits, Brevo plans to make “large investments” in M&A, says Thiberge, whether to add products to the platform or to expand geographically. Brevo has already acquired 11 companies to date.
The scaleup plans to double down on the US, where it faces tough competition from tech giants like Salesforce and Hubspot.
“The US represents 15% of our customers but it’s 50% of the global market,” says Thiberge. “There are big acquisitions we can do there.”
Brevo says it will invest €100m in the US over the next four years. The company is aiming to achieve €1bn in ARR in 2030, and to triple its workforce from 1,000 to 3,000 employees.
