Medallia raises $150M in a private equity

Blackstone leads the round, with Apollo and FS KKR Capital Corp. participating. The company issued convertible preferred stock, and closing is expected before the end of the year, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals. The money comes with a recapitalization that hands control from Thoma Bravo to the lender group and significantly reduces outstanding debt. Debt was the core problem. Reported figures put it at about $3 billion by 2026, up from $1.8 billion in 2021, with annual debt service of roughly $300 million against about $200 million in EBITDA. Verdad Advisers ranks the wiped-out $5 billion Thoma Bravo stake as the second-largest private equity loss on record. Medallia says the deal supports its existing $500 million commitment to innovation and AI transformation. For AI founders, this is a data point on incumbent software. Analysts quoted by CMSWire question whether the platform can show enough business impact as AI makes customer insight cheaper and faster to generate. Leveraged application vendors in the same position may lose ground to AI-native rivals. They may also become acquirers or partners once their balance sheets are reset.