5 on a Monday: Dassault, Procore, Autodesk deal updates; UK antitrust and … do founders ever really retire?

It has been a very busy few weeks. I hope you are all staying safe from the recent wildfires, smoke, and earthquakes.

Earnings season is underway and looking good so far. I’ll try to recap those numbers later this week. In the meantime, we have more acquisition news, a regulatory investigation, and a notable founder in the news.

The Financial Times rumors were correct. Dassault Systèmes is acquiring life sciences compliance platform ArisGlobal for $1.8 billion in cash at closing, plus up to $200 million in AI-related revenue milestones. During the company’s regularly-scheduled call with investors a few weeks ago, CEO Pascal Dalosz noted the aim is to connect heavily fragmented data, to tie together scientific discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, and patient safety into a single AI-powered continuous intelligence platform. You can read my longer take on it here.

Construction platform maker Procore is acquiring its long-time reality capture partner, DroneDeploy, for $845 million. The logic is sound: Procore tracks what should happen on a job site; DroneDeploy visually records what is happening. The companies share roughly 600 joint clients, leaving thousands of Procore customers open for a cross-sell of the existing Procore offering — but it’s a bigger deal than that, as Procore plans to use DroneDeploy’s massive image library to train AI to auto-detect job site issues.

Autodesk has officially closed its acquisition of MaintainX, the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). MaintainX joins Tandem, FlexSim, and Fusion Operations under Autodesk Operations Solutions (AOS). What goes around … I remember back when Autodesk sold off FMDesktop in 2010, because operations didn’t fit into the company’s overall strategy. Today, it is central component.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an investigation into Dassault Systèmes UK, Solid Solutions Management, and Visiativ Solutions UK over allegations of suspected anti-competitive conduct regarding Solidworks software under Chapter 1 of the Competition Act 1998 (which covers price-fixing and other pricing-related activities). The CMA case timetable says information-gathering will continue through December 2026.

Finally, what happens when successful tech founders exit? They co-found investment firms. Altair founder Jim Scapa and former COO Stephanie Buckner have launched Escape Investment Management, which has invested in ToffeeX, a physics-driven generative design platform optimized for thermal management. Marco Pietropaoli, CEO of ToffeeX, said: “Having James and Stephanie back ToffeeX through Escape is a defining moment for us … Their confidence in what we are building, and their willingness to bring both capital and expertise to the table, tells us everything about where this is heading.” Seems at least some founders aren’t all that great at this retirement thing.