On January 11, 2024, MadCap Software announced that it had acquired learning content management system (LCMS) platform Xyleme. The deal closed on December 15, 2023.
According to a video posted on LinkedIn by Xyleme, the deal was supported by Battery Ventures (Battery Ventures is also an investor in Smartling).
Bow River Capital acquired Xyleme in 2021 and exited when MadCap Software acquired Xyleme, since rebranded as MadCap Xyleme.
The Xyleme team is currently in the process of integrating into MadCap Software, though it is unclear in what capacity Xyleme’s leadership will stay on, if at all. As of this writing, each company appears to have just under 100 employees on LinkedIn.
Like Xyleme, MadCap Software would not be considered a language services provider in the traditional sense; rather, the company focuses on technical documentation authoring and publishing, and offers translation as one of many features. Xyleme’s translation capabilities are grouped under the Xyleme Create tool.
“[T]he LCMS supports side-by-side translation, allowing industry native speakers to review and refine translations against the base version,” Xyleme’s website explains. “Another advantage is its ability to separate text strings from images and screenshots, simplifying content management for both content teams and translation vendors.”
Big-name translation clients of Xyleme include Ford and Dell, and the company has also partnered with Super Agency TransPerfect in the past.
For its part, MadCap Software has included proprietary translation and localization technology among its offerings for more than a decade. These include MadCap Lingo, a computer-aided translation management software for technical authors, documentation teams, and translators, and MadTranslations, an ISO-certified technical translation service.
Xyleme was the second of MadCap Software’s 2023 acquisitions. The first, completed in February 2023, was IXIASOFT, a provider of Darwin Information Type Architecture (DITA) component content management system software.
MadCap Software cofounder and CEO Anthony Olivier told Slator that the companies were known to each other “for quite some time” through shared customer bases, industry events, and thought leadership discussions.
Olivier explained that the acquisition of Xyleme is part of a long-term strategy to position MadCap Software as offering content management solutions that reduce users’ duplication of effort.
“You typically see a significant overlap of content across the teams providing training and development and those delivering what we collectively call ‘technical documentation,’ such as product support and Help portals, knowledge bases, instructional and procedure manuals, and employee policy,” Olivier said.
Xyleme specializes in training and development content, while MadCap Software focuses on technical documentation.
Olivier added, “We have always recognized the overlap and adjacency of learning and development as a great opportunity for expansion.”
To that end, the company anticipates future acquisitions in this sphere, “building on areas where we have a strong position, such as technical documentation and learning and development.”
