Siemens acquires low-code platform Mendix for $700M

Siemens, the giant German technology company, today announced that it has acquired Mendix, the popular low-code application development platform, for €0.6 billion (or about $700 million). Mendix, which was founded in the Netherlands but now has its headquarters in Boston, will continue to operate as usual and keep its name, but Siemens notes that it will also use the company’s technology to accelerate its own cloud, IoT and digital enterprise ambitions.

“As part of our digitalization strategy, Siemens continues to invest in software offerings for the Digital Enterprise. With the acquisition of Mendix, Siemens continues to add to its comprehensive Digital Enterprise and MindSphere IoT portfolio, with cloud domain expertise, cloud agnostic platform solutions and highly skilled people,” said Jan Mrosik, CEO of Siemens’ Digital Factory Division.

Mendix’s service is already deeply integrated into IBM’s, SAP’s and Pivotal‘s cloud services. Mendix co-founder and CEO Derek Roos notes that his company and Siemens first discussed a strategic partnership, but as those talks progressed, the two companies moved toward an acquisition instead. Roos argues that the two companies’ visions are quite similar and that Siemens is committed to helping accelerate Mendix’s growth, extend the company’s platform and combine it with Siemens’ existing MindSphere IoT system.

IBM brings Mendix’s low-code platform to its cloud

“If you’ve ever wondered which low-code platform will have the viability to invest and win in the long term, you no longer have to guess,” Roos writes. “This commitment and investment from Siemens will allow us to accelerate R&D and geo-expansion investments significantly. You’re going to see faster innovation, more reach and an even better customer experience from us.”

Over the course of the last few years, “low-code” has become increasingly popular as more and more enterprises try to enable all of their employees to access and use the data they now store. Not every employee is going to learn how to program, though, so tools like Mendix, K2 and others now make it easy for non-developers to quickly build (mostly database-backed) applications.

Siemens also today announced a new company structure, dubbed Vision 2020+. The details of that aren’t all that interesting, but the company does note that it was to strengthen its growth portfolio through investments in fields like IoT integration services. The Mendix acquisition is part of that, but I’m sure we’ll see a few similar moves in the near future.

Ahead of today’s acquisition, Mendix had raised about $38 million from investors like Battery Ventures, Prime Ventures and HENQ Invest.