Oakley Capital acquires a majority stake in Graphwise, formed through the merger of Bulgaria’s Ontotext and Austria’s Semantic Web Company.
The transaction represents one of the largest software exits in Bulgaria’s history and one of the most significant to date involving a homegrown enterprise AI business.
The international private equity fund consortium of Portfolion, Integral Capital Group, and Carpathian Partners successfully concludes its buy-and-build value-creation strategy.
Leading European private equity investor Oakley Capital has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Graphwise, a key player in the enterprise AI data platforms market. Through this transaction, Portfolion Capital Partners has successfully sold its stake in the company, which it acquired in 2022 as part of an investment consortium. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The transaction represents one of the largest software sales in Bulgaria’s history and one of the most significant exits in the regional enterprise AI sector.
Deep Tech Instead of Hype: The Path to Success
Graphwise’s story exemplifies international capital raising and deliberate value creation. In 2022, Portfolion invested in Sofia-headquartered Ontotext as part of a consortium led by Integral Capital Group—alongside fund manager Carpathian Partners, with co-investments from the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The parties early on recognized that with the proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs), structured, verifiable, and context-rich data infrastructure—namely the semantic layer and knowledge graph technology—would become critically valuable.
Graphwise was formed in October 2024 through the merger of Sofia-based Ontotext and Vienna-based Semantic Web Company. This international buy-and-build strategy combined the developments and customer bases of the two pioneering companies, creating a global market leader that now provides critical AI data infrastructure services to over 200 international blue-chip clients across the financial services, pharmaceutical, and public sectors.
Value Creation Through Regional Cooperation
“This transaction is clear proof that domestic and regional private equity can achieve breakthrough successes in a globally competitive deep tech market,” said Jenő Nieder, Deputy CEO and Partner at Portfolion Capital Partners. “Through the international buy-and-build strategy implemented together with Integral Capital Group and Carpathian Partners, we successfully built an internationally dominant platform out of two regional pioneers, avoiding short-term AI hypes and creating genuine, commercially sustainable value.“
The new majority owner, Oakley Capital, in cooperation with management, plans to accelerate international expansion and further acquisitions.
