Health IT, BioPharma

French tech company Dassault makes $5.8B acquisition of Medidata

The deal represents the single largest acquisition in Dassault's history. A longtime player in the aviation and industrial space, Dassault has increasingly made the lucrative life sciences and medical industries a stronger focus of their business in recent highlighted by a number of recent acquisitions that now include Medidata.

Office workstation top view of business people working around M&A, keyboard, calculator, phablet and money on wooden table - merger and acquisition concept

French software giant Dassault Systèmes, known for their design and product management programs, has made a major play in the life sciences space with a all-cash acquisition of clinical trial technology company Medidata in a deal valued at $5.8 billion.

New York-based Medidata has a cloud-based platform that gives researchers the tools to design, manage and collect data from clinical trials. The 20-year-old company went public in 2009, earned $636 million in revenue last year from 1,300 customers ranging from pharma companies, biotech startups, CROs and medical centers.

“Our mission to get the right treatment, to the right patient, at the right time has fueled our 20-year journey of innovation and commitment to the life sciences industry,” Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif said in a statement.

“We share common vision, values and passion with Dassault Systèmes, and our combined talents will empower the life sciences industry with an end-to-end business platform.”

A recent area of focus for the company has been helping to create new hybrid and virtual models for clinical trials through new data collection and real-world evidence generation tools.

Dassault said it views digitization of clinical trial models as a major growth opportunity for the company and touted Medidata’s expertise and sizable data assets as key to enabling that vision.

“Personalized health is coming and the capacity to use the digital world to validate and test before actually putting operations in clinical practice is so important,” Dassault CEO Bernard Charles said in a video announcing the merger.

The deal represents the single largest acquisition in Dassault’s history. A longtime player in the aviation and industrial space, Dassault has increasingly made the lucrative life sciences and medical industries a stronger focus of their business in recent highlighted by a number of recent acquisitions that now include Medidata.

In 2014, the French company purchased Accelrys $750 million and used the company’s data and lab management technologies to launch its science-focused BIOVIA brand.

The deal, which has been approved by the two boards of the companies, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Photo: Kritchanut, Getty Images

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