Silver Lake to Invest in Legal-and-Compliance Software Firm Relativity – deal values about $3.6 billion

The companies aren’t disclosing the size of the Silver Lake investment, but said the private-equity firm will take seats on Relativity’s board.

Chicago-based Relativity’s software has primarily been used by the legal industry to sift through massive amounts of data in discovery, as the process of gathering information used as evidence is known. It has more than 300,000 annual users in 49 countries.

Relativity Chief Executive Mike Gamson said Relativity plans to use the investment from Silver Lake to continue to expand its core business and improve the artificial-intelligence technology used there and in its communication-surveillance product.

Silver Lake is a global technology investment firm, with approximately $75 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of professionals based in North America, Europe and Asia. Silver Lake’s portfolio of investments collectively generates more than $180 billion of revenue annually and employs more than 400,000 people globally.