ARM confirms 'biggest ever' cash deal to acquire analytics specialist Treasure Data

Treasure Data's technology will be integrated with June acquisition Stream and ARM's own Mbed cloud to create end-to-end IoT management platform

ARM has confirmed that it is buying US-based data analytics start-up Treasure Data.

The deal is part of the company's push into Internet of Things (IoT) devices and platforms and follows on from ARM's June acquisition of Streem Technologies.

"Technologies from Treasure Data, the acquisition of Stream and ARM Mbed Cloud will be combined to form the industry's first end-to-end IoT connectivity, device and data management platform," the company claimed in a statement.

That's somewhat different from Treasure Data's current focus on providing a "single, actionable view" of customer data and it remains to be seen how easy or challenging it will be to unify the three technologies into one single end-to-end device and data management platform.

News of the deal was leaked earlier this week to Bloomberg, which claimed that the acquisition values Treasure Data at around $600 million.

Treasure Data was founded in 2011 and has had funding of $54.1 million from various sources. In its last round of funding in late 2016 the company raised $25 million. The company's analytics software enables users to gain a single view of customers across their organisation's marketing technology ‘stack'.

The Treasure Data deal follows on from its June purchase of Stream Technologies, a connectivity management technology provider, which maintains more than 770,000 managed subscribers to its IoT device management network.

That deal fitted-in squarely to ARM owner SoftBank's vision of the IoT driving the semiconductor and electronics industry for the foreseeable future, the rationale behind its £24.3 billion acquisition of the company, completed in September 2016.

"The combination of Stream's technology with Arm's Mbed IoT Device Management Platform will provide organisations with a robust end-to-end IoT platform for managing, connecting, provisioning and updating devices that is easily scalable and flexible," the company claimed at the time of the deal.

However, it remains to be seen how Treasure Data's technology will integrate with Stream and the ARM Mbed cloud.

ARM, though, is convinced that "Treasure Data is the final piece of [the company's] IoT enablement puzzle".

It continued: "Its technology, along with that of another recent acquisition (Stream) for connectivity management, combined with Arm Mbed Cloud and our knowledge of the IoT hardware foundation creates something entirely new. We call it the ARM Pelion IoT Platform."

Bloomberg noted that, in the past, ARM has been conservative in its approach to mergers and acquisitions.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg suggested that a price of around $600 million had been placed on the transaction.

Although the company has refused to pin a value on the deal, a company spokesperson told Computing this afternoon that the Treasure Data acquisition will be the biggest cash deal in ARM's history.