SAP to Acquire Qualtrics

SAP will acquire Qualtrics, a provider of experience management (XM) software, for $8 billion. Qualtrics had been owned by venture capital firm Accel.

Following the closing of the transaction, Qualtrics is expected to maintain its leadership, personnel, branding and culture, operating as an entity within SAP's Cloud Business Group Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, will continue to lead the company, which is also expected to continue to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle.

Qualtrics' XM Platform collects feedback and data across customers, employees, product, and brand.

"Together, SAP and Qualtrics represent a new paradigm, similar to market-making shifts in personal operating systems, smart devices, and social networks. SAP already touches 77 percent of the world's transactions. When you combine our operational data with Qualtrics' experience data, we will accelerate the XM category with an end-to-end solution with immediate global scale. For Qualtrics, this introduces a dynamic new partner with the belief, passion and scale to bring experience management to millions of customers around the world," said SAP CEO Bill McDermott in a statement. "The combination of Qualtrics and SAP reaffirms experience management as the ground-breaking new frontier for the technology industry. SAP and Qualtrics are seizing this opportunity as like-minded innovators, united in mission, strategy, and culture. We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters, and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better. We can't wait to stand beside Ryan and his amazing colleagues for the next chapters in the experience management story. The best for Qualtrics and SAP is yet to come!"

"Our mission is to help organizations deliver the experiences that turn their customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, products into obsessions, and brands into religions," Smith said in a statement. "Supported by a global team of over 95,000, SAP will help us scale faster and achieve our mission on a broader stage. This will put the XM Platform everywhere overnight. We could not be more excited to join forces with Bill and the SAP team in this once-in-a-generation opportunity to power the experience economy."

"The team at Qualtrics have built an industry-leading experience management capability, helping their customers succeed in a time where market leadership and competitive differentiation is increasingly decided on who provides the best customer experience," said Andy MacMillan, CEO of UserTesting, providers of an on-demand insights platform. "The acquisition of Qualtrics by SAP further validates the customer experience industry and the value human insights brings to an organization. We look forward to a continued partnership with them in so many of our joint, strategic customers and welcome SAP to the space of experience management."