Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. Photo by: World Economic Forum/swiss-image.ch/Photo Monika Flueckiger, under Creative Commons license

Telecoms giant Verizon has announced it has reached a deal to acquire video-conferencing company BlueJeans Network. Verizon expects to close the deal by the second quarter of this year, which we are already into. While Verizon didn’t disclose how much it’s paying for BlueJeans, a report from the Wall Street Journal says the company is paying less than $500 million, entailing the acquisition price could be hovering at anything close to that range. The acquisition notably comes amid an extraordinary spike in video-conferencing usage amid lockdowns and movement limitations that have been enacted globally in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

San Jose-based BlueJeans Network was founded roughly a decade ago and announced last year that it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). BlueJeans has been able to court many enterprise customers including the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Intuit, Illumina, and IBM’s Red Hat. The company’s video-conferencing service is known to be one of the top-most used globally. Since its inception, BlueJeans has raised some $175 million in funding, including from well-known venture capital firms like New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Norwest Venture Partners, Accel, and Battery Ventures. Former professional baseballer turned businessman Derek Jeter is also an investor in BlueJeans.

Following the close of Verizon’s acquisition, BlueJeans’ founders, management team, and employees-at-large will become Verizon employees. Verizon will house the BlueJeans video-conferencing product under its own unified communications product roadmap.

“The combination of BlueJeans’ world class enterprise video collaboration platform and trusted brand with Verizon Business’ next generation edge computing innovation will deliver highly differentiated and compelling solutions to our joint customers,” BlueJeans CEO Quentin Gallivan states in the press release that announced the company’s acquisition. “We are very excited about joining the Verizon team and we truly believe the future of business communications starts today!”