Insight’s 2024 year in review: News-worthy exits, a record-setting ScaleUp:AI, and the next waves of innovation

Insight Partners | December 26, 2024| 3 min. read

2024 has been a remarkable year of growth, impact, and milestones for Insight Partners. From a flurry of M&A to empowering the next generation of leaders through our Onsite and IGNITE programs, this year exemplified our commitment to scaling innovation — as shown by our Path to IPO Summit, pictured above.

Despite an ever-evolving market landscape, Insight remains steadfast in our mission to support visionary founders and their transformative ideas. Here’s to a year that raised the bar — and to an even brighter future ahead.

The year of big exits

As Insight approaches our 30th anniversary in 2025, we close 2024 with over 800 total investments, including 30 new deals, $80B in regulatory assets under management, and over 500 acquisitions within our portfolio. The deals announced and closed in 2024 showcase our conviction and deep expertise in sectors like healthcare, cybersecurity, AI, and many more.

Insight Partners by the numbers

And what a way to round out the year with Databricks’ recently announced $10B Series J funding, the largest venture round in history, which Insight co-led.

In 2024, the firm also saw over 25 significant exits, including Mastercard’s acquisition of RecordedFuture, Visa’s acquisition of Featurespace, Salesforce’s acquisition of OwnCompany, SAP’s acquisition of WalkMe, BlueCat’s acquisition of LiveAction, and EQT Private Equity’s acquisition of AMCS.

2024 Insight portfolio stats

Insight’s 20/20 Vision Capital — Insight’s fund of funds investing in emerging underrepresented managers — made six new commitments this year and hosted its first annual meeting for limited partners.

Scaling at every stage

Throughout the year, we worked across our portfolio to help companies scale up and take off.

Insight Onsite — a dedicated team of 130 professionals to help fuel growth across multiple domains — helped place 349 in-demand executives across our portfolio and engaged with over 350 portfolio companies to help accelerate growth. Onsite also delivered generative AI advisory, thought leadership, and workshops to over 200 portfolio companies, equipping them with actionable frameworks to tackle GTM challenges.

Other Onsite highlights included our Drive event in Nashville, Tennessee, where we hosted more than 150 portfolio companies and their GTM leaders to help them succeed in the year ahead. We activated at other key industry events like our ScaleUp Suites at RSA and HLTH.

We also continued our Mindset CEO Summit Series, hosting early-stage CEOs in Napa Valley, growth-stage in Park City, and late-stage in Rome for three fantastic events across the globe.

Expansive networks

Insight IGNITE is a network of over 2,700 senior tech executives across more than 820 global enterprises who leverage the firm’s deep industry expertise and investment knowledge to inform their technology strategies. In 2024, IGNITE drove over 2,200 connections between our portfolio and enterprise executives.

Founders Day was just one example of Insight’s mission to bring together innovative founders from our portfolio with corporate executives building technology strategies.

Insight and Microsoft partnered to curate an exclusive Founders Day for ten of our portfolio CEOs. Spending the day with 24 senior Microsoft business and engineering leaders, these cofounders and CEOs got the opportunity to present their companies, build one-on-one relationships, and attend a fireside chat with Christopher Young, Microsoft EVP BD, Strategy & Ventures, and Jeff Horing, Insight cofounder and managing director.

“Strong partnerships start with strong shared values. Microsoft and Insight Partners believe in making the world a better place, and that technology is one of the best ways to elevate societies,” says Managing Director Mike Hayes. “Bringing our portfolio of software leaders together with Microsoft drives co-innovation, growth, and impact across industries.”

Insight also partnered with NVIDIA to bring together our AI-driven healthcare portfolio companies for a day of networking and innovation around patient care.

NVIDIA X Insight Partners

Catalyzing the conversation around AI, automation, agents, and more

Allie K. Miller at ScaleUp:AI

Now in its third year, ScaleUp:AI returned to bring together thousands of founders, builders, enterprise executives, and investors in NYC and online. From Andrew Ng’s and Allie K. Miller’s high-level conversations around embracing an AI-first mindset to deep dives and use cases, this year’s event was Insight’s largest yet with over 3,200 registrants, 41 speakers, and 20 sessions.

A recognized industry leader

Insight is deeply grateful and honored to receive recognition for our firm-wide efforts this year, and we’re especially proud of the individuals whose exceptional contributions have been celebrated through these awards:

Insight is always in #foundermode

We published 11 leadership profiles this year, with stories spanning healthtech and wellness to global cybersecurity. These stories highlight the journeys of our portfolio company leaders toward success, with Insight privileged to support them along the way.

“I’ve known Insight for 11 years and had them invested for eight. Over that time, we have been aligned in our values, and that has been demonstrated through actions — not just words.” — Christopher Ahlberg, cofounder and CEO of Recorded Future.

“I really appreciate our relationship with Insight. It’s a full 360-degree relationship. They have been with us across three rounds and that consistency and history together are important. They know this business as well as we do.” — David Ko, CEO of Calm.

“Onsite really helped me better understand how I, as CEO, need to build the right team around me to help me really focus on my role.” — Bianca Anghelina, cofounder and CEO of Aily Labs.

Giving back

Alongside Insight’s work with our portfolio, we’re proud to magnify our impact with company-wide initiatives like our Season of Giving and Software in Service campaign.

This year, Insight hosted its first Season of Giving Poker Tournament. Not only was the event an absolute blast, but those who made the final table also got the chance to donate to a charity of their choice in a big way. Over $58,000 has been donated to nine different organizations as a result of this event.

Through our annual #SoftwareInService campaign, we partnered with our portfolio companies throughout the year for Giving Tuesday, Earth Day, and more — resulting in over 600 participants across 40 companies.

That’s a wrap on 2024! Look forward to more exciting news from Team Insight in 2025.

*Editor’s note: This data is accurate as of December 19, 2024.

The portfolio companies and portfolio company executives presented are examples of portfolio companies that Insight has worked with to assist the company achieve business and capital raising goals and are not intended to be a representative sample of all portfolio companies. The statements by portfolio company executives are intended to highlight their experiences working with Insight as an investor in their companies. The experiences of other portfolio companies and portfolio company executives may differ from the experiences presented. Insight did not provide compensation to the portfolio company executives or portfolio companies in connection with the statements provided by such executives. There is no guarantee that Insight’s work with other portfolio companies will produce similar results to those presented.

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