(Bloomberg) — Genesys Cloud Services Inc. has selected underwriters as the AI-powered customer engagement software provider seeks to revive its plans for an initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
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Genesys is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., among other underwriters, on a US listing for next year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The company, backed by private equity firms Permira and Hellman & Friedman, could raise as much as $2 billion in the IPO, the people said.
Deliberations are ongoing, and details of the offering may change, the people said. Representatives for Permira, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan declined to comment. Genesys and Hellman & Friedman didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
San Francisco-based Genesys was valued at $21 billion in a 2021 funding round led by Salesforce Ventures. ServiceNow Ventures and Zoom Video Communications Inc., along with BlackRock Inc. and D1 Capital Partners.
The company, in 2022, considered an IPO that would have valued it at more than $30 billion, Bloomberg News reported at the time. That plan faltered as the equities market sunk.
Genesys helps retailers, software firms and other companies offer their customers a wide variety of call-center services, from software that handles phone and online inquiries to chatbots that run on artificial intelligence. It has worked with companies including Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services, Instacart, PureGym and Beyond Bank, according to its website.
Genesys said in a June release that it posted $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue for the first quarter, growing more than 40% year-over-year, with new bookings for its standalone AI products more than doubling over the same period last year.
The company is run by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tony Bates, a technology veteran who previously worked at companies including GoPro Inc., Skype Technologies SA and Cisco Systems Inc.
Permira acquired Genesys in 2012 from Alcatel-Lucent in a deal that valued the company at $1.5 billion, according to a statement at the time. Hellman & Friedman invested $900 million at a valuation of $3.8 billion in 2016.
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