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VMware completed its acquisition of Carbon Black on October 8, 2019, paying $26 in cash for each Carbon Black share. VMware said the transaction represented an enterprise value of $2.1 billion—a distinct figure from the per-share cash consideration.

What VMware paid and when the deal closed

VMware announced the completion on October 8, 2019. Its announcement described an all-cash transaction at $26 per Carbon Black share and an enterprise value of $2.1 billion. The enterprise-value figure describes the transaction as a whole; it is not the amount paid to each shareholder.

VMware’s completion announcement set out those terms. A VMware filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gives more detail on how the deal was completed.

How the acquisition was completed

The transaction used a cash tender offer. The offer expired on October 7, 2019. According to the SEC filing, 64,173,721 shares—approximately 85.1% of Carbon Black’s outstanding shares—had been validly tendered and not withdrawn. The merger was consummated the next day, October 8. Shares not tendered were converted into the right to receive $26 in cash per share, subject to applicable withholding.

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Why VMware said it acquired Carbon Black

VMware presented Carbon Black as the foundation for a broader security business. The company said it planned to combine Carbon Black with products such as NSX and Workspace ONE and extend security across endpoints, workloads, networks, identity, and cloud. VMware described this as part of its “intrinsic security” strategy.

In the completion announcement, VMware chief operating officer Sanjay Poonen said: “Carbon Black brings us an industry-leading endpoint and workload security platform, with a cloud-native architecture, an AI-powered data lake and a smart, lightweight agent.” This is VMware’s characterization of Carbon Black’s technology, not independent evidence of security effectiveness or of financial synergies from the acquisition.

VMware’s FY2023 proxy materials later described the Carbon Black endpoint-security platform among security solutions launched after the acquisition. That documents VMware’s subsequent product positioning, but does not establish the business results or effectiveness of those solutions.

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What changed after VMware’s acquisition

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware on November 22, 2023, according to Broadcom’s announcement. Five days later, Carbon Black’s Jason Rolleston wrote that “Carbon Black is now an autonomous business unit within Broadcom” in a November 27, 2023 Carbon Black blog post. That statement describes the business at that time; these dated sources do not establish Carbon Black’s ownership structure, products, availability, or support arrangements in 2026.

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