Geneva’s SonarSource Buys RIPS Technologies 

Geneva-based startup SonarSource is buying German code security startup RIPS Technologies, the companies announced.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

SonarSource has open-source and commercial code analyzers to help developers manage code quality. RIPS is the company’s first acquisition to date.

“About three years ago we thought that we were mature enough in code quality that we thought we can look at this other market, which is security,” SonarSource CEO Olivier Gaudin said in an interview with Crunchbase News. “This is when we kind of started to extend our technology to do that.”

SonarSource already has some security features in its products, but by buying RIPS, customers will benefit from having the best analyzers on the market with the product, Gaudin said. Conversations regarding an acquisition began last June and died down before starting back up around the end of last year, according to Gaudin. More serious conversations began this January.

The companies are not disclosing the acquisition price. RIPS has about 25 employees, and they will be joining SonarSource, although they will remain based in Bochum, Germany. RIPS CEO Johannes Dahse will become SonarSource’s head of research and development, according to a statement from the company.

RIPS wasn’t looking to be acquired, according to Dahse, but the company figured it would soon have to focus more on the developer world than security experts. But SonarSource made sense as a partner, since it would be easier to get RIPS’ technology into the developer through an established player in the field, and SonarSource had been focusing on developers from the beginning, he said.

“I think with joined forces we can play a much bigger role, we can have a way bigger impact on the market than doing this as a sole company,” Dahse said.

With RIPS, SonarSource wants to grow the market so that all companies with developed software tools have access to security tools, Gaudin said.

SonarSource, which has about $45 million in funding, is backed by Insight Partners.

Illustration: Dom Guzman