Blue Prism was one of the leaders in the market. Initial public offering On 18 March 2016, Blue Prism undertook an IPO when the company floated on the London Stock Exchange AIM market with a market capitalisation of £48.5 million. The company's shares rose 44 percent on the first day of trading on AIM, under CEO Alastair Bathgate. Customers include O2, Co-operative Bank and Fidelity Investment Management. By November 2016, it had offices in Chicago and Miami, as well as the United Kingdom. On 6 January 2017 Blue Prism announced it would open new offices in Austin, Texas, while remaining based in London. At the time, it employed 86 people worldwide. In March 2017, a group of shareholders sold stakes in Blue Prism. At the time, Blue Prism remained based in Merseyside. In June 2017, Blue Prism announced that a new version of its software would run on public clouds such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Previously, the software had run on customers' own servers. In 2019, Blue Prism announced changes to its platform and the issuing of new stock. It included a new AI engine, an updated marketplace for extensions, and a new lab for in-house AI innovation. As of April 2020, the leadership team is made up of chairman and CEO Jason Kingdon and co-founder and CTO David Moss. Kingdon, an early investor in the company, became chairman in 2008 and led the company until its successful IPO in 2016. Kingdon returned as chairman in 2019 and became CEO in April 2020 when former CEO Alastair Bathgate stepped down, Kingdon remained CEO until 2022. Acquisition In September 2021, it was announced that Vista Equity Partners plans to acquire Blue Prism for £1.095 billion ($1.5 billion USD). Vista intends to merge Blue Prism into TIBCO Software. Vista is said to be considering “potentially material headcount reductions” of 8 to 10 per cent of the approximately 4,750 employees of the merged companies. The original takeover deal was first announced in December 2021, when a bidding war between SS&C and Vista Equity partners drove up the price. Blue Prism shareholders ultimately voted in favor of SS&C. On March 16, 2022 SS&C Technologies (Nasdaq: SSNC) announced it had completed its acquisition of Blue Prism Group Plc ("Blue Prism") for approximately $1.6 billion (£1.25 billion). Blue Prism technology Blue Prism is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. It