Who owns Qualtrics? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Qualtrics is one of the most-traded companies in enterprise software that almost nobody can buy shares in. Its ownership has changed hands three times in five years: from a bootstrapped founder-led business, to a German software giant, to a public company, and back into private hands. Few software firms of its size have moved through so many owners so quickly.

The company sells experience management software, tools that let organizations collect and act on feedback from customers and employees. It sits in a crowded field of enterprise cloud vendors, but its ownership story is unusually eventful. A near-miss initial public offering, an $8 billion pre-IPO acquisition, a delayed spin-out, and a private equity buyout all happened inside a single decade.

Today Qualtrics is owned by a consortium led by the private equity firm Silver Lake, with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as its largest partner. Founder Ryan Smith kept a stake and stayed on as executive chairman. Understanding who controls Qualtrics means tracing how a Utah survey tool became a prize fought over by SAP, Wall Street, and one of the world's biggest pension funds.

Qualtrics was founded in 2002 in Provo, Utah. Scott M. Smith, a marketing professor at Brigham Young University, started it with his sons Ryan Smith and Jared Smith, and co-founder Stuart Orgill. The idea grew out of Scott Smith's work on academic survey research, and the team built the first product from the family basement. The company bootstrapped for roughly a decade before taking outside money, an unusual path for a business that would later be valued in the billions.

The company's core product is its Experience Management (XM) platform, cloud software that gathers structured feedback through surveys and unstructured signals from text, voice, and other channels, then uses analytics and AI to help companies respond. Its customers include large enterprises across retail, financial services, technology, and government. Qualtrics has said it serves more than 19,000 organizations.

Qualtrics is now headquartered in Provo, Utah, with a major office in Seattle, Washington. It employed roughly 6,300 people as of early 2026. The most recent confirmed valuation is the $12.5 billion enterprise value from its June 2023 take-private, the largest deal in Silver Lake's history at the time. As a private company, Qualtrics no longer reports quarterly financial results, so more current figures are not publicly disclosed.

Qualtrics is privately held. It traded publicly on the Nasdaq under the ticker XM for about two and a half years, from its January 2021 initial public offering until June 2023, when a Silver Lake-led group took it private and its stock stopped trading. Before that public window it was a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP, and before that a venture-backed private company. It is now controlled by a private equity consortium rather than by public shareholders.

Ryan Smith is the most significant individual owner. He remained the largest individual shareholder through the SAP years and the public listing, and he rolled a portion of his equity into the 2023 buyout, keeping a stake and the role of executive chairman. Exact current ownership percentages are not disclosed, because Qualtrics is private and no longer files shareholder data with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What is confirmed is that Smith retained meaningful ownership and a board leadership seat, alongside Silver Lake and CPP Investments as the controlling investors. Co-founders Jared Smith and Stuart Orgill are no longer in day-to-day operating roles.

Qualtrics bootstrapped for years before raising venture capital, then took two large rounds ahead of the SAP deal. The table below traces the major ownership events, from private funding through the take-private.

Silver Lake is the controlling owner. The technology-focused private equity firm led the 2023 buyout and had already been a Qualtrics investor, holding a stake just under 4.2% before the deal. Silver Lake described the acquisition as the single largest investment in its history.

CPP Investments, which manages the Canada Pension Plan, is the largest partner alongside Silver Lake in the consortium. The pension fund put substantial equity into the deal, giving Qualtrics an owner with a long investment horizon rather than the shorter hold periods typical of buyout funds.

Three co-investors joined the take-private. Accel, an early Qualtrics backer, invested $500 million. BDT & MSD Partners committed $250 million. DFO Management, the family investment office of Dell founder Michael Dell, also invested $250 million. Earlier in the company's history, Sequoia Capital and Insight Partners were the notable venture backers before SAP absorbed the company.

The most consequential owner in Qualtrics history was SAP. In November 2018, days before Qualtrics was set to go public, the German enterprise software company agreed to buy it for $8 billion in cash, closing the deal in January 2019. SAP later opted to spin the business back out rather than keep it fully absorbed, listing it publicly in 2021 while holding on to about 71% of the shares. SAP's decision to sell its entire remaining stake is what made the 2023 take-private possible. A useful contrast is SAP's own ownership structure, a widely held public company with no controlling shareholder, which is the opposite of the concentrated private ownership Qualtrics now sits under.

Jason Maynard is chief executive officer, appointed in February 2026. He joined from Oracle, where he was an executive in revenue operations and had come up through NetSuite after Oracle acquired it. His arrival caps a leadership transition that began when longtime CEO Zig Serafin stepped down in late 2025 after roughly five years running the company; Serafin moved into a vice chairman and adviser role. The path from Oracle is a reminder that leadership talent moves across the enterprise software field, where Oracle's founder-led ownership under Larry Ellison sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Qualtrics' private equity control.

Ryan Smith is executive chairman and the founder still most closely tied to the company. He is also the majority owner of the NBA's Utah Jazz, which he bought in 2020, and Forbes has estimated his net worth at roughly $2 billion. His continued equity and board role give the founder side a voice in a company otherwise steered by financial owners.

The board is controlled by the investor consortium. Silver Lake and CPP Investments hold the deciding say over strategy, capital allocation, and executive appointments, while Ryan Smith anchors the founder presence. Because Qualtrics is private, it does not publish a proxy statement, so the full board roster and committee structure are not disclosed in the detail a public company would provide.

The 2018 SAP deal was itself a point of contention. Qualtrics was days from pricing an IPO that was reportedly oversubscribed when SAP stepped in with an $8 billion cash offer. Pre-empting a public offering that close to the finish line is rare, and it left early investors and employees holding a private outcome instead of public shares. When SAP later spun the company back out, some observers questioned why it had bought the business only to list most of it two years on.

Private equity ownership changes the accountability picture. With Silver Lake and CPP Investments in control, Qualtrics answers to a small group of financial owners rather than a dispersed public shareholder base. That concentration can speed decisions, but it also removes the disclosure and outside scrutiny that come with public listing. Customers and employees have less visibility into the company's finances than they did during the Nasdaq years, which is a common trade-off when a software firm goes private.

Large buyouts and follow-on acquisitions carry financial risk. The $12.5 billion take-private was a substantial deal, and Qualtrics has since made its own large purchase, the $6.75 billion acquisition of healthcare experience firm Press Ganey Forsta completed in 2026. Deals of that size, layered on a private equity capital structure, raise questions about leverage and integration that a private company is not required to answer publicly. Mapping those competitive and financial risks is the kind of exercise a competitive analysis template is built for.

Ownership shapes how Qualtrics competes. Under SAP, it was a strategic asset inside a much larger software portfolio, expected to feed data into SAP's enterprise systems. Under Silver Lake and CPP Investments, it is a standalone company judged on its own growth and cash generation. That shift changes what the company optimizes for, from serving a parent's roadmap to building value a financial owner can eventually sell or relist.

The private structure gives Qualtrics room to make big bets without quarterly market pressure. The $6.75 billion Press Ganey Forsta acquisition and a heavy push into AI, including its Experience Agents products, are the kind of moves that are easier to fund and defend away from public scrutiny. For a company chasing a fast-moving software category, that patience can be an advantage. It also means outsiders cannot easily judge whether those bets are paying off. Anyone sizing the opportunity has to lean on SaaS industry benchmarks rather than Qualtrics' own numbers.

For investors, the ownership mix is unusual. CPP Investments brings a long time horizon that most buyout funds lack, which may give Qualtrics more runway before any exit. Silver Lake brings software operating experience and a track record of large technology deals. Ryan Smith's retained stake keeps founder incentives in the room. That blend of pension capital, private equity, and founder ownership is rare, and it points toward patience rather than a quick flip.

For customers and employees, private ownership is a double-edged outcome. It can mean stability and long-term investment, but it also means less transparency and a future that depends on the owners' eventual plans, whether that is a sale to another company or a return to the public markets. Putting a number on the business, absent public filings, now requires tools like a business valuation calculator and a lot of estimation, where before the market did the pricing every day.

Jason Maynard is the CEO of Qualtrics, appointed in February 2026. He joined from Oracle, where he worked in revenue operations after coming up through NetSuite. He succeeded Zig Serafin, who led the company for about five years and moved into a vice chairman and adviser role in late 2025.

No. Qualtrics is privately held. It traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker XM from January 2021 until June 2023, when a group led by Silver Lake and CPP Investments took it private. Its shares no longer trade on any public exchange.

Qualtrics was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, a Brigham Young University marketing professor, together with his sons Ryan Smith and Jared Smith and co-founder Stuart Orgill. Ryan Smith remains executive chairman and the founder most closely tied to the company. He also owns the NBA's Utah Jazz.

The controlling owners are the private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), which led the 2023 take-private. Co-investors include Accel, BDT & MSD Partners, and Michael Dell's DFO Management. Founder Ryan Smith kept a stake and is the most significant individual shareholder. This concentrated setup differs sharply from a widely held peer such as Salesforce's ownership structure.

The most recent confirmed valuation is $12.5 billion, the enterprise value of the June 2023 take-private at $18.15 per share. Because Qualtrics is now private and does not report financial results, no more current market valuation is publicly available. SAP had acquired the company for $8 billion in 2019, and it briefly reached a much higher valuation on its first day of public trading in 2021.

No. SAP acquired Qualtrics for $8 billion in cash in 2019, then listed it publicly in 2021 while keeping about 71% of the shares. In the 2023 take-private, SAP sold its entire remaining stake to the Silver Lake-led consortium. SAP no longer holds any ownership in Qualtrics.