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Private equity investor Oakley Capital has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Graphwise, a key player in the enterprise AI data platforms market. The transaction represents one of the largest software sales in Bulgaria’s history and one of the most significant exits in the regional enterprise AI sector.
Graphwise was formed in 2024 through the merger of two pioneers in semantic technologies: Ontotext, founded in Sofia in 2000 by Atanas Kiryakov, and Vienna-based Semantic Web Company, founded in 2004 by Andreas Blumauer and Martin Kaltenböck. Since then, Graphwise has established itself as a leader in RDF (Resource Description Framework) knowledge graph and semantic layer technology and has delivered historical organic ARR growth of over 30 per cent a year, benefitting from the AI tailwind.
It provides critical AI data infrastructure services to over 200 international blue-chip clients across the financial services, pharmaceutical, and public sectors.
Through this transaction, Portfolion Capital Partners has successfully sold its stake in the company, which it acquired in 2022 as part of an investment consortium.
“This transaction is clear proof that domestic and regional private equity can achieve breakthrough successes in a globally competitive deep tech market,” said Jenő Nieder, Deputy CEO and Partner at Portfolion Capital Partners.
“Through the international buy-and-build strategy implemented together with Integral Capital Group and Carpathian Partners, we successfully built an internationally dominant platform out of two regional pioneers, avoiding short-term AI hypes and creating genuine, commercially sustainable value.”
“We are excited for this new partnership with Oakley, as their team understands both our technology and our ambition,” said Atanas Kiryakov, President and Co-founder of Graphwise.
“Oakley has an outstanding track record of transforming founder-led software businesses into unicorns. Together, we look forward to expanding our platform and supporting more organisations to adopt AI with confidence.”
The new majority owner, Oakley Capital, in cooperation with management, plans to accelerate international expansion and further acquisitions. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.