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Paris-based software scaleup Brevo has joined Europe’s fast-growing unicorn club, securing a €500m secondary share sale that values the company at more than €1bn and puts fresh momentum behind its global expansion plans.
Founded in 2012, Brevo builds all-in-one customer relationship and marketing tools for small and medium-sized businesses. Its platform helps companies manage email and SMS campaigns, track customer engagement, and support sales teams in turning leads into paying customers — a space long dominated by heavyweight rivals like Salesforce and HubSpot.
New investment, new cap table, and a new phase
The €500m round is entirely secondary, meaning the money went to existing shareholders selling part or all of their stakes rather than into Brevo’s balance sheet. US investor General Atlantic and UK-based Oakley Capital co-led the transaction and now each own 25% of the company.
French VC firm Partech, which first backed Brevo in 2017, fully exited in the deal. Longtime investors Bpifrance and Bridgepoint sold part of their holdings and now jointly retain 24% of the shares. The biggest shift, however, is internal: Brevo’s management and employees are now the company’s largest shareholder block with 26%, a structure that aligns ownership more closely with the team driving the business.
Alongside the share sale, Brevo has also secured an undisclosed amount of debt financing. That capital is earmarked primarily for further mergers and acquisitions, giving the scaleup more firepower to accelerate product development and international expansion.
Profitability, scale, and a clear path to IPO
Brevo says it serves more than 600,000 customers worldwide, with roughly 70% of them based in Europe. The company expects 2025 to mark its second consecutive year of profitability, targeting around €200m in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and over €30m in EBITDA.
Founder Armand Thiberge describes the deal as the natural outcome of “reaching the end of a cycle” and needing to provide liquidity to early backers. With public markets still challenging for new tech listings, Brevo opted to tap private equity instead. “It’s easier to find €500m in private equity than on public markets,” he notes.
An initial public offering is still on the roadmap, but on a longer horizon. Thiberge suggests a listing could happen within four to seven years — and, crucially, he wants Brevo to go public in Europe rather than chase a US listing. The company positions itself as a champion of “digital sovereignty”, signaling that it can build a global footprint while remaining anchored to European markets and regulation.
Going after the US CRM and marketing automation giants
Brevo has already acquired 11 companies to date, using M&A both to bolt on new features and to enter new regions. With its latest debt facility and strong operating cash flows, the company is now preparing for what Thiberge calls “large investments” in acquisitions, especially in the United States.
The US currently represents about 15% of Brevo’s customer base, but accounts for roughly half of the global market for CRM, marketing automation, and customer engagement software. That imbalance makes the region Brevo’s single biggest growth opportunity — and its toughest battleground, given the entrenched presence of Salesforce, HubSpot and other cloud software leaders.
Brevo plans to invest €100m specifically into the US over the next four years, combining organic growth with targeted M&A to deepen its product stack and distribution. The company has set an ambitious long-term goal: reaching €1bn in ARR by 2030 and tripling its workforce from around 1,000 to 3,000 employees worldwide.
For SMBs looking for alternatives to the usual US-centric CRM and marketing platforms, Brevo’s rise signals that Europe is not just catching up in cloud software — it is beginning to set its own pace, with global ambitions and a distinctly European approach to data, sovereignty, and growth.
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