Take-private acquisition positions Windward for significant strategic growth by leveraging FTV Capital’s expertise to accelerate product development and global expansion
London & New York, March 18, 2025 – Windward, the leading Maritime AI company, today announced the successful close of its acquisition by FTV Capital, a leading sector-focused growth equity investor. The acquisition establishes Windward as a privately held U.S. company, strengthening its foothold in the United States and setting the stage for significant growth in key government and commercial sectors. With the completion of this transaction, Windward shares will no longer trade on the London Stock Exchange.
Global maritime trade continues to grow, with 80% of global trade volume being transported by sea. At the same time, rising geopolitical tensions, supply chain pressures and evolving regulatory requirements are making global shipping more complex and vulnerable, spurring increased demand for maritime intelligence. Combining maritime analytics and risk intelligence, Windward’s platform utilizes AI-powered predictive intelligence to generate insights and actionable data across operations, risk and compliance for government agencies, and blue-chip companies globally, including supply chain operators, freight forwarders and energy companies.
“This acquisition marks a transformative moment for Windward,” said Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward. “FTV brings impressive experience helping European companies scale go-to-market in the United States and an extensive track record investing in data and analytics software companies. With FTV’s strategic guidance and ability to open doors through its Global Partner Network®, we are well-positioned to enhance the value we deliver to our customers, ultimately delivering cutting-edge AI solutions that drive operational efficiency, maximize financial returns and help organizations navigate the ever-evolving world of global trade and security.”
“Windward has built a strong reputation as an industry-leading maritime AI-based platform that blue-chip customers and governments rely on to effectively operate and manage risk in an increasingly complicated global trade landscape,” said Brad Bernstein, managing partner at FTV Capital. “We are thrilled to complete this acquisition and look forward to working with the Windward team to hasten their growth strategy by building out Windward’s go-to-market organization, in particular in the United States.”
“At FTV, we’ve played a pivotal role in helping European companies expand globally, with a strong focus on the U.S. market,” said Jerome Hershey, principal at FTV Capital. “We see significant potential for Windward to deepen its customer base in both the government and commercial sectors and are excited to partner with Ami and the Windward management team to drive their ambitious vision for product innovation and international growth.”
As part of the transaction, Brad Bernstein, Jerome Hershey and Giovanni Bacarella, vice president at FTV Capital, joined Windward’s board of directors.
About Windward
Windward is the leading Maritime AI™ company, providing an all-in-one platform to accelerate global trade. Windward’s AI-powered decision support and exception management platform, enhanced with Generative AI, offers a 360° view of the maritime ecosystem and enables stakeholders to make real time, predictive intelligence-driven decisions to achieve business and operational readiness.
By integrating advanced AI and Generative AI capabilities, Windward delivers deeper insights, automated risk analysis, and enhanced maritime intelligence and context. Windward’s Maritime AI™ supports companies across industries. The company’s clients range from energy supermajors, shipowners, mining companies, freight forwarders, and port authorities, to banks, insurers, and governmental organizations.
For more information visit: https://windward.ai/.
About FTV Capital
FTV Capital is a sector-focused growth equity investment firm that has raised more than $10.2 billion to invest in innovative, high-growth companies across two sectors: enterprise technology and services and financial technology and services. Founded in 1998, FTV has developed a highly differentiated and disciplined growth equity model, which leverages the firm’s deep domain expertise and thematic investing approach to help portfolio companies accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network®, a strategic group of more than 500 executives from many of the world’s leading financial services firms and FTV Propel®, an in-house team of seasoned operational leaders who deliver counsel and resources across a range of critical business functions.
For more information, please visit www.ftvcapital.com and follow the firm on LinkedIn.
Media Contacts
Headline Media for Windward
David Hoffman
david@headline.media
+972-52-842-1955
Prosek Partners for FTV Capital
pro-ftvcapital@prosek.com
646-818-9051
