Clinical trial specialist Medidata Solutions is being bought out by France’s Dassault Systemes in a $5.7 billion deal designed to help the tech firm diversify deeper into the biopharma services world.
The cash deal sees the New York-based company subsumed into Dassault, which has specialized in design software but now wants in on the lucrative CRO and clinical trial space that has seen a bunch of high-end deals and buyouts in recent years.
“This is by far the largest acquisition we’ve ever made,” Pascal Daloz, chief financial officer of Dassault, said on a conference call and quoted in Fortune.
Medidata, which had sales of $636 million last year, has been making its own deals over the years, including pacts with biotechs such as Forty Seven. In 2017, it inked a deal centered on site payments for Worldwide Clinical Trials after the biopharma services company spent 18 months looking for the right partner.
Last summer, Big Pharma giant Novartis also penned a deal with Shyft, a Medidata subsidiary, to help strengthen its digital solutions and help it push on with the launch of new therapies targeted for the European market.
Back in 2016 it also made its own buyout, snapping up Intelemage and integrating its medical image sharing technology into its cloud-based clinical trial platform.