Grain Buys LightRiver

This morning a bit of M&A landed that touches on a whole lot of networks out there, at least indirectly. LightRiver has itself a new owner. Grain Management has announced the acquisition of the company’s Technologies and Software divisions.

LightRiver actually designs, stages, and deploys many of the optical infrastructure buildouts and equipment upgrades we see in the news, something they’ve been doing for some 24 years now. Early on they focused on energy and other utility companies with networking needs, but have expanded across the network sector over time.  More recently they have expanded their expertise into software-defined world, delivering integrated, automated multi-vendor solutions.  We had LightRiver’s Travis Ewert on here for an Industry Spotlight a couple years ago when they had just started down this path.

Grain Management has long invested in the infrastructure space, and their portfolio of network operators these days includes names like WANRack, Great Plains Communications, Ritter Communications, and Summit Broadband. Acquiring LightRiver shows how confident they are that such operators will have plenty of expansion and upgrade projects coming down the pike.

Grain acquired LightRiver from CVF Capital Partners and Plexus Capital. Cowen and Company acted as exclusive financial adviser.

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Categories: Engineering & Construction · Mergers and Acquisitions · SDN · Software