Japanese cybersecurity software company Trend Micro Inc. is reportedly exploring a sale after being approached by several potential buyers.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that Trend Micro is working with investment banks to attract interest from potential buyers, including private equity firms, but the same source noted that it was not certain that a deal would go through.

Trend Micro declined to comment on the potential sale. A spokesperson said only: “As a market-leading, publicly traded cybersecurity company, we remain focused on business transformation and customer expansion through our industry-leading AI platform.”

Founded in 1988, Trend Micro initially focused on antivirus software for PCs before expanding its portfolio to include more comprehensive security products over the years. Based in Tokyo, Trend Micro today offers advanced solutions that protect businesses and consumers from digital threats. The company’s current focus is on providing comprehensive security for cloud environments, networks and endpoints to help businesses protect their digital assets.

Trend Micro’s offerings include artificial intelligence-based threat detection, cloud security solutions, and advanced threat intelligence services. The company’s Cloud One platform provides security services tailored for cloud-native applications, while the Vision One platform provides advanced detection and response capabilities for endpoints, servers, and networks.

In June 2023, Trend Micro released Companion, a generative AI assistant that enables security operations center teams to ask threat hunting questions. Offered as part of the company’s One XDR platform, the service can explain cross-layer event alerts, decode tracker scripts, generate breach containment recommendations, automate email responses and help desk tickets, and automate incident reporting.

If a takeover were to take place, Trend Micro would have a market capitalization of around 950 billion yen (6.5 billion US dollars).

The potential private equity interest in Trend Micro comes as no surprise—in fact, the only surprise is that Thoma Bravo’s name isn’t mentioned in the report. Thoma Bravo was behind the largest-ever acquisition of a cybersecurity company in 2024, that of Darktrace for $5.3 billion in April.

Thoma Bravo also likes to buy large cybersecurity companies, so Trend Micro would fit their previous acquisition pattern and the company has the money to do so. The company’s model involves buying up technology companies, restructuring them and merging them with other acquisitions, sometimes over a period of several years, before selling the acquired company for a profit.

A recent example is the sale of cybersecurity software company Venafi Inc. to CyberArk Software Inc. for $1.54 billion in April. Thoma Bravo earned $400 million on the deal.

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