(Bloomberg) – International Business Machines Corp. is set to strike a deal to buy software company Apptio for about $5 billion, as part of a deeper push into automation technology, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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The two sides are in advanced talks and an agreement could be reached by the weekend, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. Apptio is currently owned by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.
A Vista spokesperson declined to comment. IBM representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Apptio, founded in 2007, sells online services that help manage information technology budgets, forecasts and analysis. The majority of Fortune 100 companies use its products, the company said on its website.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who took over in 2020, has been rocking the 112-year-old company. After acquiring Red Hat in 2019, IBM spun off its Kyndryl business in 2021, then divested the Watson Health division. He said last month that IBM was still focused on deals, but that would likely be less than the $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat.
It’s unclear whether the roughly $5 billion purchase price for Apptio would include debt, the Journal reported.
–With help from Kamaron Leach.
(Updates with Vista’s answer to the third paragraph.)
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