Clearwater Analytics has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Beacon, a provider of cross-asset class modeling and risk analytics for derivatives, private credit and debt, structured products and other alternative assets, and Bistro, Blackstone’s proprietary portfolio visualization software platform built for Blackstone’s Credit & Insurance business.
Clearwater will acquire Beacon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $560m, 60% of which will be paid in cash, with the remainder to be paid in shares of Clearwater Class A common stock valued at approximately $30.05 per share. With ARR of approximately $44m at the end of 2024, this platform has scale and market acceptance as a leading risk and modeling platform.
The purchase price for the Bistro software is $125m, of which $10m will be paid in cash and the remainder will be paid in shares of Class A common stock, valued at $30.00 per share. This transaction represents the purchase of a platform developed by Blackstone.
Clearwater will use the proceeds from its previously committed $800m Term Loan B, cash on hand, and a portion of its $200m revolving line of credit to fund the acquisitions of Beacon and Bistro and the previously announced acquisition of Enfusion.
“These transactions bring the critical IP needed to build a disruptive, end-to-end platform for the investment management industry. Integrating these platforms into a single, seamless solution will require intense focus and execution over the next year or two, but I’m confident in our ability to deliver. As we complete this work, we expect our customers to be completely delighted,” said Sandeep Sahai, CEO at Clearwater Analytics.
For insurance companies and asset owners, these acquisitions represent a fully integrated technology stack for investment management that combines pre-trade, post-trade and risk all in one platform. It will bring all their public and private assets into a single analytics framework, obviating the need for constant upgrades, endless reconciliation and error-prone manual processing. This platform will also enable efficient asset liability matching and regulatory reporting and lower the cost of doing business.
For asset managers, this will mean eliminating inefficiencies in managing private credit, real estate debt, structured products and alternative investments. Clearwater will be the only SaaS platform capable of providing a complete, real-time understanding of exposures, cash flow dynamics and risk correlations across strategies, geographies and asset types. Client reporting that includes a comprehensive view of all their public and private assets and scenario modeling will be dramatically enhanced.
“With this combination, Chief Investment and Chief Risk Officers will have a unified, real-time view of their entire portfolio—from public equities and private credit to structured products and alternatives—all in a single, cloud-native platform. The Clearwater platform will allow them to drill down and comprehensively understand their exposure to a company, industry or geography across all their investments, public and private. That will, in turn, allow them to model their entire portfolio, evaluate cash flows and understand risk. Add to that the industry-leading pre-trade capabilities of the Enfusion platform, and the industry will have a true front-to-back platform, enhancing their ability to make better investment decisions,” said Sandeep Sahai, CEO at Clearwater Analytics.
“This is an incredible moment—not just for Beacon, but for the entire industry,” said Kirat Singh, CEO of Beacon. “Our platform is already integrated with Clearwater and Enfusion at many of our shared clients, delivering best-in-class risk, performance and pre-trade functionality. By bringing these platforms together, along with Blackstone’s Bistro, we’re creating something truly industry-leading—giving institutional investors complete transparency across front office, pre-trade, risk and accounting. We believe no one else can offer this level of depth, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
“Technology is critical to everything we do, including how we interface with key investors who are broadening their exposure to private credit assets. We built the Bistro platform to address a need we saw in the market both for ourselves and our clients to have a more advanced credit portfolio insights platform. Clearwater has an exciting opportunity to continue evolving this core infrastructure platform for the credit asset management industry and we look forward to helping them build something that creates enduring value,” said John Stecher, Chief Technology Officer of Blackstone.
Michael Chae, Blackstone Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer, added: “The culture of innovation at Blackstone extends across how we develop both investment and operational solutions, and the value creation represented by Bistro is a reflection of that.”
“PIMCO has had a strategic partnership and minority stake in Beacon since 2018 and is highly supportive of the combination with Clearwater. Our partnership with Beacon has enabled us to accelerate the development of market-leading risk and analytics tools on behalf of our clients. We are excited to build upon this long-standing partnership with Clearwater and to explore even more opportunities which create value for our clients globally,” said John Kirkowski, Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of PIMCO.
