Atlassian, the company behind HipChat and the JIRA software development tool, plans to acquire Trello, a vendor of the eponymous collaborative project management software.
The deal will give Atlassian users new ways to organize, discuss and complete their work, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian's co-founder and co-CEO, wrote in a blog post Monday.
"By adding Trello to the Atlassian family, we're giving teams more choice in the tools they use to support the way that they want to work," he said. Trello will offer "a fun new way for teams to organize the often messy range of information that feeds into great teamwork."
Trello, with more than 19 million users, is a "break-out success" in the team-building software market. Among Trello's customers: Google, PayPal, Kickstarter, and Pixar, according to the company's website.
"Trello's pioneering use of an intuitive visual system has been embraced by all kinds of teams to do everything from managing marketing campaigns to tracking action items from team meetings," Cannon-Brookes wrote. "Atlassian's mission is to unleash the potential in every team. In Trello, we found a group that is as dedicated to helping teams get stuff done as we are."
The Trello card-based system is intuitive and easy to use, he added. It's popular with marketing, legal, HR, and sales teams.
The acquisition, expected to close later this quarter, is priced at US$425 million, with $360 million in cash and the remainder in stock, an Atlassian spokesman said.
Trello, launched in 2011, was spun out from parent company Fog Creek Software in 2014. The company raised $10.3 million in funding led by Spark Capital and Index Ventures.
The 14-year-old Atlassian has acquired nearly 20 companies in that time.