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Pluralsight

Edtech / developer skillingUSA
✂️ Markdown
Peak $3.5 BillionToday
~-100%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2017
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $3.5 Billion ’21
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2024
  4. 💸
    Last valuation
    ~$0
Current status
Vista equity (~$4B incl. co-investors) written to zero; lenders (Blue Owl, Ares) took control, 2024

How it happened

Pluralsight sells online courses and skill assessments that help companies train software developers and IT teams. It went public in 2018 and was taken private by Vista Equity Partners in 2021 in a $3.5B deal. The roughly $1.3B of debt raised to fund the buyout, priced at low pandemic-era rates, proved unserviceable as rates rose, even with healthy ~26% EBITDA margins. In Q1 2024 Vista wrote its equity to zero, and a private-credit consortium led by Blue Owl and Ares converted debt to equity and took control, wiping out roughly $4B that Vista and its co-investors had put in.

Source: Axios; Reuters; Private Equity Wire