Aveva CEO Craig Hayman. Photo credit: Thomas Cloer on Flickr, under Creative Commons license

Aveva, a UK-based industrial software company, is in talks to acquire OSIsoft, a fellow industrial software company but based in the US, for up to $5 billion, as first reported [paywall] by Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg, Aveva, a Cambridge-based company, has initiated exclusive talks about a purchase of OSIsoft and could announce a formal acquisition deal within weeks. Aveva itself has confirmed it’s in talks with OSIsoft, but there’s no guarantee that the talks will result in a sale.

SoftBank, the Japanese technology conglomerate, is a significant shareholder in OSIsoft, thanks to an investment in 2017 that’s rumored to have been up to $800 million. The Japanese company as of late has been selling off assets to pay down its sizeable debt load, so it shouldn’t be then surprising that SoftBank helped initiate a possible sale of OSIsoft and stands in line to likely reap a sizeable profit on its investment in the company. OSIsoft as a company stands out when compared to others of its kind, having been founded way back in 1980. The company was long bootstrapped, with its first major outside funding coming in 2011, about three decades after its founding. A $5 billion acquisition price would mark one of the largest transactions ever seen in the industrial software industry.

OSIsoft, a San Leandro, California-based company, sells software primarily used in industrial sectors such as oil and gas, manufacturing, pharmaceutical development, and utilities.