Medallia

How it happened

Medallia builds customer- and employee-experience software that captures and analyzes feedback signals for large enterprises. After going public in 2019, it was taken private by Thoma Bravo in 2021 in a $6.4B leveraged buyout. Heavy debt of roughly $2.8B, with interest costs that outran earnings once pandemic-era payment-in-kind relief expired, left the equity underwater. In 2026 Thoma Bravo wrote its ~$5.1B stake down to virtually zero and ceded control to creditors led by Blackstone, Apollo and KKR, who injected $150M of fresh equity.