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Arlington-based WireWheel has been acquired by Osano, a data privacy management company out of Austin, Texas.
Osano, which aims to simplify the process of building and managing data privacy programs for companies, is not disclosing the financial terms of the acquisition.
A majority of WireWheel’s employees are joining Osano, though some employees weren’t offered new roles because of redundancies between the businesses, a spokeswoman told ARLnow.
Other top brass, including its founder Justin Antonipillai — the former Acting Undersecretary of Economic Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama — will not continue with Osano, either.
“The founders will not be staying on as part of the acquisition,” the Osano spokeswoman said. “However, WireWheel’s head of Data Privacy will be joining Osano’s customer facing teams to help our customers successfully implement our solutions.”
WireWheel declined to comment for this story and deferred to Osano CEO Arlo Gilbert.
Founded in 2016, the Courthouse-based startup provides companies with privacy assessment tools to keep up with the ever-evolving regulatory environment surrounding data privacy, which varies greatly by country and state.
These platforms show customers what data they collect on customers and how that data is used, while allowing customers the ability to access or delete this data or indicate they do not want it sold. Two years ago, the startup raised some $200 million to speed up its go-to-market plans and market its products to small and mid-sized companies.
Gilbert, Osano’s CEO, says this is the first of an expected 12 acquisitions in the coming 18 months, involving $100 million, to transform the data privacy market.
“This acquisition is high-impact for Osano and WireWheel’s customers because the two companies’ solutions complement one another so well,” Gilbert said in a statement. “Adding WireWheel’s technology to our platform delivers major advantages for enterprise customers, who will benefit from the scalability, customizability, customer experience and advanced features that address the needs of deploying data privacy programs at scale.”
The Courthouse startup’s tools will also give Osano clients extra confidence while pursuing AI initiatives, per the press release.
Companies that train AI models with large data sets have to ensure the data is free of personal information. Inadvertently including private information in these sets is a costly mistake, as these expensive AI models then have to be destroyed.