cross pond high tech

Janrain, one of the companies that helped usher in Portland’s technology renaissance a decade ago, sold Monday to a Massachusetts online services company called Akamai Technologies.

Privately held Janrain mines information from social networks to help its clients, large retailers and others learn about the people visiting its website. Visitors can use their logins from other sites, like Google or Facebook, to log in to a retailer’s site – and the retailer can then analyze that shared information.

Akamai said it will use Janrain’s technology to help its own clients improve their online security by identifying automated bots and limiting their access to online registration features. Akamai said that will help the sites reduce fraud.

Financial terms of Monday’s deal weren’t disclosed, but Akamai said it was an all-cash transaction that would reduce its profits by as much as $10 million this year, then add to profitability in future years.

Akamai is a publicly traded company that reported $2.5 billion in sales last year, and profits of $218 million.

Janrain, which once employed more than 150, now employs 127 -- 92 of them in the Portland office. Akamai said it will retain the Portland site and integrate a small group of its employees already here into Janrain’s office.

The companies didn’t immediately say what Akamai will do with Janrain’s Portland office, which once employed more than 150.

Founded in 2005, Janrain had raised at least $79 million, most recently in a $27 million round three years ago. The Portland company says it has more than 3,400 clients, including Coca-Cola, NPR and Philips.

As social media gained popularity in the years after the Great Recession, Janrain was among Portland’s most promising young technology companies and helped lead the Silicon Forest’s transition from its roots in hardware manufacturing to a new generation of startup providing software and online services.

Janrain’s profile was somewhat diminished in recent years, however, as the company refocused amid the changing social media landscape and diminished investor enthusiasm for social networking startups.

Monday’s sale followed a string of deals for Oregon technology companies in 2018, including young tech businesses such as Cozy, Exterro, Mirador Financial and Electro Scientific Industries – Oregon’s oldest tech company.

The spate of deals reflect the strong national economy and the continued low cost of borrowing, which has helped spur acquisitions and investments in many industries. Additionally, Oregon tech companies – like Janrain – tend to operate in market niches, which make them more likely to be consolidated into larger organizations than to do the consolidating themselves.