---
title: "MariaDB goes private with new CEO as K1 closes acquisition"
type: "News"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/213959544.md"
description: "MariaDB has officially gone private following its acquisition by K1 Investment Management, with a new CEO, Rohit de Souza, replacing Paul O’Brien. The company filed a Form 25 with the SEC on August 26, marking its de-listing from the NYSE, and a Form 15 to initiate the de-registration process, effective December 6. MariaDB's public listing, which began via SPAC in late 2022, struggled with declining valuations and compliance issues, leading to K1's majority stake acquisition of 88.7% of shares by July 26."
datetime: "2024-09-10T13:17:18.000Z"
locales:
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/213959544.md)
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/213959544.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/213959544.md)
---

# MariaDB goes private with new CEO as K1 closes acquisition

MariaDB‘s short-lived tenure as a public company is all but over, as the struggling database business is now fully under the auspices of K1 Investment Management. MariaDB also announced a new CEO in the form of former Micro Focus executive Rohit de Souza, who replaces Paul O’Brien after just 16 months in the hotseat in preparation for life as a private company.

The company quietly filed a Form 25 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on August 26th, marking the day that California-based private equity firm K1 took full-ownership of MariaDB and its shares de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as in interim measure. Then last Thursday, MariaDB filed a Form 15 with the SEC, formally triggering the company’s de-registration process from the NYSE, which takes a full 90 days to take effect — this means that MariaDB will officially cease to be a public company on December 6, though for all intents and purposes the company is effectively private now given that trading has ceased and it has limited reporting obligations.

## The road to SPAC

MariaDB launched as a MySQL fork some 15 years ago, following concerns about MySQL’s independence after a series of big bucks’ acquisitions led Oracle to effectively own the open source relational database management system. The namesake corporate entity went on to raise around $230 million in funding through the years to sell premium features and services on top of the MariaDB open source project, and the company eventually went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in late 2022.

The public listing was far from fruitful, with its open day peak valuation of $445 million — a figure already way below its private high valuation of $672 million — dropping drastically in the months that followed to below $12 million a the start of 2024. A string of subpar earning reports prompted the NYSE to warn MariaDB that it wasn’t in compliance with listing rules that stipulate a company’s average global market capitalization can’t fall below $50 million over a consecutive 30-day trading period.

K1 tabled a non-binding proposal for MariaDB back in February, offering $0.55 per share which was the equivalent of around $37 million. Despite a slightly higher tentative offer from enterprise software company Progress that never materialized, K1 forged ahead to secure the majority of MariaDB’s shares — this amounted to 88.7% of the issued shares by July 26. This was sufficiently high to kickstart a compulsory share acquisition notice, meaning that it was legally entitled to buy all outstanding ordinary shares from shareholders who hadn’t accepted the offer, at the same $0.55 price — this concluded on August 26.

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