EQT Eyes $6 Billion Sale of SUSE (reuters.com)
(Tuesday March 10, 2026 @12:00PM (BeauHD)
from the what-to-expect dept.)
- Reference: 0180945322
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/0450204/eqt-eyes-6-billion-sale-of-suse
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/eqt-eyes-potential-6-billion-sale-linux-pioneer-suse-sources-say-2026-03-09/
Private equity firm EQT AB is reportedly [1]exploring a sale of SUSE that could value the open-source Linux pioneer at up to $6 billion, roughly doubling the valuation since EQT took the company private [2]in 2023 . Reuters reports:
> EQT "has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The deliberations are at "an early stage and there is no certainty that EQT will proceed with "a transaction, the sources said. [...] The potential deal comes amid a broader selloff in software stocks, which has disrupted mergers and acquisitions activity. Investors are "concerned that new artificial intelligence tools could displace many existing software products, weighing on technology "valuations and making deals harder to price.
>
> Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/eqt-eyes-potential-6-billion-sale-linux-pioneer-suse-sources-say-2026-03-09/
[2] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/08/18/096242/suse-to-flip-back-into-private-ownership
> EQT "has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The deliberations are at "an early stage and there is no certainty that EQT will proceed with "a transaction, the sources said. [...] The potential deal comes amid a broader selloff in software stocks, which has disrupted mergers and acquisitions activity. Investors are "concerned that new artificial intelligence tools could displace many existing software products, weighing on technology "valuations and making deals harder to price.
>
> Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/eqt-eyes-potential-6-billion-sale-linux-pioneer-suse-sources-say-2026-03-09/
[2] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/23/08/18/096242/suse-to-flip-back-into-private-ownership
Where is SUSE used? (Score:2)
by mckwant ( 65143 )
Revenue of $800M can't be all wrong, but if you sum up all the times I've installed OSs, SUSE is somewhere down there with various BSDs.
Is it regional? "Zappa is God in Hungary / Czechoslovakia", sorta?
How it started (Score:2)
by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *
> SUSEs new Chief Marketing Officer, Margaret Dawson, was previously the Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Red Hat (famous for discriminatory policies).
Some affiliated people were talking about ditching the "four freedoms" and "cutting out" the "rot" of "fascists" from their licenses.
Last I heard they couldn't get anybody to volunteer to stand for a board seat on the OpenSuSE Foundation, so no elections. Has that changed?
I knew some local businesses that loved working with SuSE on HPC int
SUSE has been a great partner (Score:2)
But I wonder if there's really room for multiple professional support options for Linux in the enterprise. We've got IBM, Oracle, SUSE, Canonical, and a few others.
Which is your favorite?
Re: (Score:2)
There has been a push for EU 'tech sovereignty' on various fronts, and I could see SUSE benefiting from that. Currently I haven't seen a SUSE push in that, mainly because nvidia has pushed Ubuntu hard.
Re: (Score:2)
You are saying exactly what I have been thinking for some time. If the EU is looking for their own distribution free from outside influences, SUSE would be a perfect fit in my opinion.
The EU needs to keep SUSE... (Score:2)
Because SUSE is European, it really needs to be kept going as a viable distribution on an enterprise level. Otherwise, sovereignty is at risk. Ideally, some multi-national NGO can be made to handle SUSE patching, as well as OS design for future specifics. On one hand, this needs to be open that people can find bugs and patch quickly. On the other hand, it needs to be very much focused, so it doesn't languish in committee. For example, RHEL is moving towards an immutable Linux model, and it might be wis
Re: (Score:2)
What big European player wants to put $6B on the table though? SAP is the biggest European software company I can name and that doesn't seem like a strategic fit to me.