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Permira completed its acquisition of Squarespace on October 17, 2024, taking the website-building company private in an all-cash transaction with an approximately $7.2 billion aggregate transaction value. The final offer was $46.50 per share, up from the original $44 proposal, and Squarespace’s shares stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
What Permira acquired
This was an acquisition of Squarespace, Inc.—not merely its website-builder product. The transaction covered the publicly traded company and its broader platform, including websites, domains, e-commerce, marketing, scheduling and related online-business tools.
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The deal was structured as an all-cash take-private transaction. After closing, Squarespace was no longer a public company and its shares were no longer listed on the NYSE.
Why the offer increased
On May 13, 2024, Squarespace agreed to a Permira offer of $44 per share, described at the time as approximately $6.9 billion in enterprise value. On September 9, Squarespace and Permira amended the agreement, raising the price to $46.50 per share—a 5.7% increase—and describing the revised deal as having an approximately $7.2 billion aggregate transaction value. Squarespace said the independent special committee and board unanimously approved and recommended the revised offer.
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The increase followed concerns about whether the original price adequately reflected Squarespace’s value. Contemporary reporting said Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that shareholders reject the original offer on valuation grounds. That recommendation helps explain the negotiation context, but it does not establish that ISS directly caused Permira to raise its bid.
Squarespace cited the revised price as a 36.4% premium to its 90-day volume-weighted average trading price of $34.09. A premium to a recent market price, however, is not the same as proof that the offer represented the company’s full intrinsic value.
What the $7.2 billion figure means
The headline number should be read carefully:
- $46.50 per share: the cash consideration for each share covered by the offer.
- Equity value: the value attributable to the company’s shares.
- Aggregate transaction value: the approximately $7.2 billion figure used in the revised announcement by Squarespace and Permira.
- Enterprise value: a broader valuation measure that can reflect debt, cash and other adjustments. The original proposal was described as approximately $6.9 billion in enterprise value.
Accordingly, $7.2 billion should not casually be described as Squarespace’s market capitalization or as the exact amount of cash distributed to shareholders. Those measures are not necessarily identical.
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Deal timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 13, 2024 | Squarespace agreed to Permira’s $44-per-share proposal, with an announced value of approximately $6.9 billion. |
| September 9, 2024 | The parties raised the offer to $46.50 per share and approximately $7.2 billion in aggregate transaction value. |
| September 20, 2024 | A previously scheduled shareholder meeting was canceled after the revised tender-offer structure. |
| October 11, 2024 | The tender offer expired one minute after 11:59 p.m. New York time. |
| October 14, 2024 | Permira completed the tender offer, accepting and paying for the tendered shares. |
| October 17, 2024 | The second-step merger became effective, completing the take-private transaction. |
For the legal sequence, the SEC filing confirms that the merger became effective on October 17.
How the tender offer and merger completed the take-private
This was not simply a conventional shareholder vote followed by a closing. Permira first used a tender offer to acquire shares directly from shareholders. Squarespace reported that 46,971,451 shares were validly tendered. Including shares rolled over or sold by insiders and existing investors, the transaction represented approximately 97.5% of total voting power and 77.7% of the voting power held by unaffiliated shareholders.
After the tender offer was accepted and paid for on October 14, the parties completed the second-step merger on October 17. Remaining shares were converted into the right to receive the same $46.50-per-share cash consideration, subject to applicable withholding taxes.
What happened to Anthony Casalena and existing investors?
Founder and CEO Anthony Casalena remained Squarespace’s CEO and board chairman. He rolled over a substantial majority of his existing equity, leaving him one of the company’s largest shareholders after the transaction rather than making a complete exit.
Accel and General Atlantic also remained meaningful investors. This means the transaction transferred Squarespace into private ownership without eliminating all continuing ownership by the founder and existing backers.
What changed for public shareholders?
Shareholders who tendered their shares became entitled to cash at $46.50 per share under the offer’s terms. Shareholders whose shares remained outstanding received the same economic consideration through the second-step merger. Payment mechanics and timing depended on the tender and merger procedures, so not every shareholder necessarily received funds on the same date.
After October 17, investors no longer had the ordinary public-market ability to buy or sell Squarespace shares. They also gave up future participation in the company’s public-market gains or losses in exchange for the cash consideration and greater transaction certainty.
What the acquisition meant for customers and employees
The closing announcement did not announce an immediate change to Squarespace subscriptions, website hosting, domains, commerce tools, Acuity Scheduling, Bio Sites, Unfold, customer accounts or product access. Customers were not automatically required to migrate to another platform because of the acquisition.
That does not guarantee that pricing, features, support or product priorities would never change. It means only that those changes were not established by the closing announcement. Permira and Squarespace described plans to continue serving entrepreneurs and expand the product suite, but those statements were forward-looking rather than guarantees.
Management continuity was confirmed, but the closing release did not provide a comprehensive workforce plan. Claims about layoffs, restructuring, compensation or office closures therefore require separate evidence and should not be inferred from the acquisition alone.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A separate transaction: Tock and American Express
Shortly before the Permira closing, Squarespace completed the sale of its restaurant-reservation platform, Tock, to American Express for approximately $400 million on October 15, 2024. Tock was sold to American Express; it was not part of the Permira acquisition of Squarespace itself.
What this means for someone choosing a website platform
The take-private transaction alone is not a reason customers must switch platforms. Anyone evaluating Squarespace should assess its current features, terms and pricing directly because those can change independently of the 2024 deal.
- Squarespace: a strong fit for an integrated, design-oriented website, domain, hosting and business-tools experience.
- Wix: a broad visual site-building ecosystem with a large app marketplace.
- Shopify: a commerce-first option for catalogs, checkout, payments, inventory and multichannel selling.
- WordPress.com: a publishing-oriented ecosystem with different levels of extensibility and hosting arrangements.
- Webflow: a better fit for professional designers and agencies seeking more granular front-end control.
Current subscription prices, introductory offers, transaction fees, domain charges and feature limits should be checked on each provider’s official pricing page rather than taken from acquisition-era coverage.
Bottom line
Permira’s Squarespace acquisition completed on October 17, 2024. The final offer rose from $44 to $46.50 per share, and the transaction was described as having an approximately $7.2 billion aggregate transaction value. The tender offer was completed first, followed by a second-step merger that ended Squarespace’s public listing.
Shareholders received—or became entitled to receive—cash, while founder Anthony Casalena remained CEO and chairman and retained substantial equity exposure. The closing established a change in ownership and public-market status, but it did not by itself establish immediate changes to customer products, pricing or employee arrangements.
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