A software company that started with five co-founders in a basement office in Encinitas now generates $600 million in annual recurring revenue after completing its acquisition of a major competitor.
Seismic, the San Diego-headquartered enterprise sales technology firm, closed its merger with Seattle-based Highspot on Tuesday, Aug. 18, combining two rivals into a single company serving 2,500 customers and 3.5 million users worldwide, according to a Seismic press release.
The deal cleared U.S. antitrust review after a second request from the Department of Justice, which ultimately took no action to block it, according to Wilson Sonsini, the law firm that advised Highspot.
CEO Rob Tarkoff, who joined Seismic after leadership roles at Oracle and Adobe, told the San Diego Business Journal that merging two former competitors required careful navigation.
"It's always challenging to bring two companies together that formerly competed against each other quite a bit and reshape the narrative around the market category and combine the cultures of the two companies," Tarkoff said.
Encinitas roots
Seismic's five co-founders, Doug Winter, Fred Xie, Nasser Barghouti, Marc Romano and Ed Calnan, launched the company from a basement office in Encinitas in 2010. On the company's founding story page, Winter wrote that they saw "a massive need for sales and marketing teams to move faster, be nimble, and deliver personalization and customization for their customers."
Sixteen years later, the combined company employs roughly 1,700 people across offices in San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Vancouver, Toronto, London and Hyderabad, India. Its customer roster includes Oracle, IBM, Expedia Group, Uber and Thomson Reuters.
Seismic completed its first full year of profitability in 2024. About 100 of its customers each pay more than $1 million annually.
What's next
The combined company operates under the Seismic name. Highspot's product is now branded "Highspot by Seismic," and Highspot founder Robert Wahbe has joined Seismic's board of directors, according to the San Diego Business Journal. British private equity firm Permira, which has invested in Seismic since 2020, remains the controlling shareholder.
Financial terms of the merger were not disclosed. Highspot had raised $650 million since its 2011 founding and was last valued at $3.5 billion in 2022, GeekWire reported.
Seismic plans to invest more than $100 million annually in research and development and has set a goal of reaching $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. The company will unveil its combined product roadmap at Seismic Shift 2026, its annual conference scheduled for Oct. 12–15 in Carlsbad.
