Successful Exit for HTGF: OVHCLOUD ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF EDGE COMPUTING SPECIALIST GRIDSCALE

August 4, 2023

• Cologne-based gridscale offers an innovative range multi-tenant IaaS and PaaS products and services.
• The strategic acquisition will enable OVHcloud, the European cloud leader, to significantly accelerate its geographical deployment, and to enter the very fast-growing market of Edge Computing.
• High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) was the first investor back in 2016 and has closely supported the successful development of gridscale.
• The start-up’s existing investors including HTGF, Endeit Capital, EnBW New Ventures and BLSW Seedfonds (managed by EnjoyVenture) will sell their shares as part of the deal.
• Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud: “We are impressed by the solutions developed by the gridscale teams, which we will be delighted to integrate into OVHcloud.”
• Henrik Hasenkamp, founder and CEO of gridscale: “The know-how and global footprint of OVHcloud will enable us to deploy and enrich our products, at scale, quickly and in accordance with our shared values.”
• Maurice Kügler, Senior Investment Manager at HTGF: “The team around CEO Henrik Hasenkamp has impressively built a fast-growing player in the German IaaS and PaaS market. We are convinced that with OVHcloud gridscale has found the right partner with immense synergy potentials.”

Bonn, Germany / Roubaix, France, 04 August 2023 – OVHcloud, the European cloud leader, announces the full acquisition of German company gridscale, a software provider specialised in hyperconverged infrastructure. High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and the start-up’s existing investors including Endeit Capital, EnBW New Ventures and BLSW Seedfonds (managed by EnjoyVenture) will sell their shares as part of the deal. HTGF was the first investor in a seed round in 2016 and closely supported the startup throughout all phases of the company’s development.  

This strategic acquisition marks another important milestone for OVHcloud by enabling the Group to significantly accelerate its geographical deployment, and to enter the emerging, very fast-growing market of Edge Computing. gridscale offers an innovative range multi-tenant IaaS and PaaS products and services. The company’s main presence is in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where it enjoys a solid reputation. It can rapidly deploy a Public Cloud environment on a limited infrastructure, giving it a significant competitive advantage which, associated with the depth of OVHcloud’s solutions portfolio, will allow the Group to grow in the Public Cloud market in a more agile and flexible way while having better control of investments.

We are impressed by the solutions developed by the gridscale teams, which we will be delighted to integrate into OVHcloud. Our solutions and know-how are highly compatible and very complementary. The combination of our different technologies will allow us to accelerate our deployment of Edge Computing solutions and our geographic expansion while optimizing our capital allocation.

Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud

Joining OVHcloud is a great opportunity for gridscale. Their know-how and global footprint will enable us to deploy and enrich our products, at scale, quickly and in accordance with our shared values. We look forward, along with the entire team, to getting to work with the OVHcloud teams and our ambitions are reinforced thanks to this trajectory now in common.

Henrik Hasenkamp, founder and CEO of gridscale

The management team, founders of gridscale, and all of its employees will shortly be joining the OVHcloud workforce, and the pooling of skills and products will make it possible to quickly offer customers an Edge Computing offer fully integrated into OVHcloud products. This offer will be consumable thanks to existing APIs and will guarantee a unique user experience for customers.

It has been a great pleasure to accompany gridscale on their growth journey over the last years. The team around CEO Henrik Hasenkamp has impressively built a fast-growing player in the German IaaS and PaaS market. We are convinced that with OVHcloud gridscale has found the right partner with immense synergy potentials.

Maurice Kügler, Senior Investment Manager at HTGF

As our first investor about seven years ago, HTGF has accompanied us through all important phases of the company. For us, HTGF has been and continues to be one of the most important sparring partners in almost every business situation. HTGF’s incredibly extensive network and highly experienced investment managers have made a significant contribution to our success today.

Henrik Hasenkamp, founder and CEO of gridscale

*The transaction is expected to close at the beginning of September 2023.

ABOUT OVHCLOUD
OVHcloud is a global player and the leading European cloud provider operating over 450,000 servers within 37 data centers across 4 continents to reach 1,6 million customers in over 140 countries. Spearheading a trusted cloud and pioneering a sustainable cloud with the best price-performance ratio, the Group has been leveraging for over 20 years an integrated model that guarantees total control of its value chain: from the design of its servers to the construction and management of its data centers, including the orchestration of its fiber-optic network. This unique approach enables OVHcloud to independently cover all the uses of its customers so they can seize the benefits of an environmentally conscious model with a frugal use of resources and a carbon footprint reaching the best ratios in the industry. OVHcloud now offers customers the latest-generation solutions combining performance, predictable pricing, and complete data sovereignty to support their unfettered growth.

Media Contact
media@ovhcloud.com

About gridscale
The Cologne-based technology provider gridscale stands for intuitive, flexible multi-cloud and Edge Computing solutions and offers companies and data center operators a turnkey plug-and-play environment for hyper-converged IT infrastructures. The customer decides on the location of his secure and sovereign data processing. In addition, the gridscale technology allows scale-out to connected, public cloud environments as required, for example for less sensitive workloads. gridscale is managed by the founders and managing directors Henrik Hasenkamp and Marc Dittmann.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds  
The seed investor High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) finances tech start-ups with growth potential and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of its fourth fund, HTGF now has about 1.4 billion euros under management. Its team of experienced investment managers and start-up experts support young companies with expertise, entrepreneurial spirit and passion. HTGF’s focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digital tech, industrial tech, life sciences, chemistry and related business areas. To date, external investors have injected about 5 billion euros of capital into the HTGF portfolio via more than 2,000 follow-on financing rounds. In addition, HTGF has already successfully sold shares in more than 170 companies.
Fund investors in this public-private partnership include the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, KfW Capital and 45 companies from a wide range of industries. 

Media contact 
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH 
Tobias Jacob, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager  
T.: +49 228 – 82300 – 121
t.jacob@htgf.de