The $253 million in Series C funding from Ford (F) and Microsoft (MSFT) that Pivotal announced last Thursday turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, Pivotal, which specializes in modern software development tools and techniques, received a total of $653 million in new investments, according to an SEC document filed on Friday.
When asked to explain that gaping differential, a Pivotal spokesman replied that EMC (EMC), one of Pivotal’s parent companies, converted $400 million in debt to equity.
Read More: Is the Planned Pivotal IPO Still On?
“At this point in its development, Pivotal, a three-year old company with strong financial and customer momentum, now has no long-term debt, strategic investors, and significant cash,” according to an emailed statement.
The spokesman did not say so, but all of those attributes make the company a more viable IPO candidate than it would be otherwise, and Pivotal has been on an IPO track for some time.
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That goal probably got more important in the wake of Dell’s decision to merge with EMC in a deal now valued at about $59 billion. That deal, announced in October, and slated to close within a year of that date, involves a lot of debt. A fruitful Pivotal IPO could alleviate some of that debt burden.
To back up, Pivotal was founded in 2013 with EMC and VMware owning 69% and 31% stakes respectively. Very soon thereafter, General Electric (GE) bought a 10% stake for $105 million and EMC and VMware owned 62% and 28% respectively.
At its inception, Pivotal employed about 1,250 people, and its component products earned about $300 million in annual revenue, according to EMC chief executive Joe Tucci.
For more about the Dell-EMC deal, watch:
Pivotal, the company, inherited Pivotal Labs, a software development consultancy along with Greenplum big data products from EMC. From VMware, it got the Cloud Foundry software development platform, SpringSource software development tools, and other intellectual property. (EMC owned and continues to own a majority stake in VMware.)
As of last week, Pivotal claimed about 2,000 employees in 17 offices and posted a first quarter revenue of $83 million.
