The story
Established in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Jamf Software was founded by Zach Halmstad, Christopher Thon, and Chip Pearson, launching The Casper Suite in 2002. Currently based in Minneapolis, its name came from Laszlo Jamf, a character in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.
As Apple continued to grow into larger environments, Jamf developed tools to make its devices work in corporate environments. In 2015, seven years after Summit Partners invested $30 million in the firm, Halmstad and Pearson were replaced by Dean Hager as CEO of Jamf.
Two years after IBM selected it to manage its Macs, The Casper Suite was rebranded as Jamf Pro in 2017. After Vista Equity Partners acquired the majority of its shares in December of that year, Jamf bought Orchard & Grove, ZuluDesk and Digita Security by 2019.
With the acquisition of the three aforementioned companies following the investment from Vista, Jamf expanded its product portfolio to include identity and authentication management, an education-specific MDM, and endpoint security built for Mac using user behavior analytics.
It raised $468 million with a successful IPO on Nasdaq in July 2020, valuing it at $4.6 billion. In May 2021, Jamf acquired zero-trust software vendor Wandera for $400 million. In April 2025, Jamf acquired Identity Automation for $215 million.
As of December 31, 2022, the company reported servicing approximately 71,000 active customers globally. Furthermore, Jamf's technology is deployed on roughly 30 million Apple devices worldwide.
By agreeing to be acquired by Francisco Partners for $2.2 billion in an all-cash deal in October 2025, Jamf expects to retain its name and headquarters following the deal close in Q1 2026. On January 30, 2026, it was announced that Francisco had completed the purchase of the company for the desired amount.
From Wikipedia’s article on Jamf, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4