Amulet Capital Promotes Adam Grossman to Partner

Amulet Capital Partners, a Miami-based private equity firm focused on middle-market software and technology investments, announced Monday that it has promoted Adam Grossman to partner. The move comes after Grossman spent four years building out the firm's enterprise software practice and leading transactions worth more than $4 billion in aggregate value.

The promotion isn't ceremonial. Grossman has been the primary dealmaker on some of Amulet's most significant software acquisitions over the past few years, including the firm's 2024 take-private of cloud security platform Vanta and its 2025 carve-out of Oracle's legacy CRM division. Those deals alone accounted for roughly $2.8 billion in transaction value, according to people familiar with the terms.

What's notable is the timing. Amulet has been quietly retooling its investment strategy over the past 18 months, shifting away from diversified industrials and services deals toward a concentrated bet on vertical software and enterprise infrastructure. Grossman's elevation signals that the pivot isn't temporary — it's structural.

"Adam has been instrumental in shaping our software investment thesis and executing on some of our most complex transactions," said Michael Chen, co-founder and managing partner at Amulet Capital, in a statement. "His ability to identify durable software businesses with pricing power and his operational rigor in value creation made this promotion a straightforward decision."

Grossman joined Amulet in 2022 after nearly a decade in investment banking, most recently as a managing director in Goldman Sachs' technology M&A group. At Goldman, he advised on over $30 billion in transactions, including Vista Equity Partners' $16.5 billion take-private of Citrix and KKR's acquisition of Barracuda Networks.

His move to Amulet was part of a broader migration of senior dealmakers from New York and San Francisco to Miami's growing private equity scene. The city has emerged as a surprise challenger to traditional PE hubs, driven by tax advantages, lifestyle appeal, and an influx of capital from Latin American family offices and U.S. institutions looking to diversify their GP relationships beyond the usual suspects.

Amulet itself was founded in 2018 by Chen and Sarah Whitmore, former partners at TPG and Blackstone, respectively. The firm raised a $1.2 billion debut fund focused on mid-market buyouts, primarily in business services and industrials. Its second fund, closed in 2023 at $2.4 billion, marked a decisive shift toward software, with roughly 70% of committed capital earmarked for enterprise tech deals.

Grossman has been the architect of that shift. Since joining, he's led six platform acquisitions and 14 add-on deals, all in software. His focus has been vertical SaaS businesses serving healthcare, financial services, and supply chain management — categories where switching costs are high and customer retention rates routinely exceed 95%.

The transactions that put Grossman in line for partnership aren't public knowledge in their entirety, but three deals stand out. The first was Amulet's $1.1 billion acquisition of Vanta in August 2024, a take-private that valued the compliance automation platform at roughly 12x ARR — a premium multiple even in a heated market for security software.

The deal was complicated. Vanta had raised over $350 million from Tiger Global and Sequoia at a $2.2 billion valuation during the 2021 boom. By 2024, revenue growth had slowed from 300% to 60%, and the company was burning through $15 million per quarter. Grossman convinced Amulet's IC that the business had defensible moats — automated SOC 2 compliance workflows with 98% renewal rates — and that profitability was achievable within 18 months with disciplined cost management.

He was right. Vanta hit adjusted EBITDA breakeven in Q3 2025 and is now tracking toward 30% margins by year-end, according to a person with knowledge of the company's financials. The turnaround hinged on Grossman's operational playbook: cutting discretionary R&D spend, consolidating go-to-market teams, and repricing legacy contracts to reflect value delivered rather than land-and-expand promises made during the growth-at-all-costs era.

The second marquee deal was the Oracle CRM carve-out in February 2025, a $1.7 billion transaction that took Oracle's legacy on-premise CRM suite and its 4,000-person services org off the parent company's books. Oracle wanted to shed the subscale, low-margin division to focus on cloud infrastructure. Amulet saw an opportunity to bolt on the CRM asset to its existing portfolio company, Nexus Software, a vertical CRM platform serving mid-market manufacturers.

The integration was messy but successful. Grossman oversaw the transition of 1,200 enterprise customers from Oracle's support infrastructure to Nexus's cloud platform, a process that took 11 months and required custom migration tooling. The combined entity now generates $420 million in ARR with 82% gross margins, up from 68% pre-merger.

The third deal worth mentioning is ClaimLogic, a $680 million take-private of a healthcare claims automation platform in November 2023. The business wasn't broken, but it was underleveraged. ClaimLogic had built proprietary integrations with every major payer — UnitedHealth, Anthem, Cigna — but was undermonetizing its position. Grossman's thesis was that the company could triple pricing over three years without material churn, given the cost of switching and the compliance risk of moving off a certified platform.

Elevating Grossman to partner isn't just about rewarding past performance. It's a statement about where Amulet is headed. The firm is doubling down on software at a time when many mid-market PE shops are retreating from high-multiple tech deals in favor of safer, cash-flowing industrial rollups.

The bet is that the current dislocation in software valuations — particularly for vertical SaaS and infrastructure tools — creates a multi-year buying window. Public market multiples for software companies have compressed from 15x ARR in 2021 to 6x today, and private market pricing has followed with a lag. That means businesses that would've commanded 10-12x ARR two years ago are now trading at 6-8x, assuming they have real unit economics and predictable revenue.

Amulet's edge, according to Grossman, is operational discipline. The firm doesn't buy software companies to flip them in three years. It buys them to fix them — cutting burn, rationalizing product roadmaps, repricing contracts, and building scalable go-to-market engines. That playbook works best when entry valuations are reasonable and there's room to manufacture value through blocking and tackling rather than multiple expansion.

"The market's rewarding profitability again," Grossman said in an interview. "We're not interested in buying growth for growth's sake. We want businesses where the unit economics work, where customers renew because they have to, not because sales reps charm them into it every year. That's the durable stuff."

The approach is resonating with LPs. Amulet is currently in market for its third fund, targeting $3.5 billion, and early indications suggest it'll be oversubscribed. Two large public pensions — CalPERS and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas — have already committed a combined $400 million, according to public filings. Both cited Amulet's software track record and Grossman's deal execution as key drivers of their allocation decisions.

Grossman's promotion also reinforces Miami's claim as a legitimate private equity center. Five years ago, the city was home to maybe a dozen mid-market or larger PE firms. Today, there are over 40, managing a combined $80 billion in AUM. The growth has been fueled by lifestyle migration, but it's sticky because the talent and infrastructure are following.

Law firms, accounting shops, and investment banks have all opened Miami offices in the past three years. JPMorgan, Jefferies, and Evercore now have full-service M&A teams in the city. That ecosystem density matters — it means dealmakers like Grossman can operate from Miami without sacrificing access to advisors, co-investors, or deal flow.

As a principal, Grossman was primarily a deal executor. As a partner, his responsibilities expand to fund strategy, LP relations, and portfolio oversight across the entire software vertical. He'll also take a seat on Amulet's investment committee, giving him voting authority on every deal the firm considers — not just the ones he sources.

The role comes with carry points, too. While Amulet hasn't disclosed the specifics, industry standards suggest a newly minted partner at a $2.4 billion fund typically receives 2-4% of total carry, depending on tenure and deal contribution. If Amulet's Fund II delivers a 2.5x net multiple — in line with top-quartile software-focused funds — Grossman's share could be worth $50-100 million over the fund's life.

But the immediate focus isn't wealth accumulation. It's deployment. Amulet has $1.1 billion of dry powder left in Fund II and another $3.5 billion coming in Fund III. Grossman's mandate is to put at least $2 billion of that capital to work in software over the next 24 months, which means sourcing 6-8 platform deals and 20+ add-ons.

The pipeline is already robust. Grossman is currently in late-stage diligence on two potential platforms: a vertical SaaS business serving commercial real estate brokerages and a cybersecurity mesh provider targeting mid-market enterprises. Both deals are expected to close in Q3 2026, assuming financing markets cooperate.

The challenge is that the software M&A market is getting more competitive again. After a quiet 2023 and 2024, strategic buyers are back in force. Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft have all signaled plans to deploy $10+ billion each in M&A over the next 18 months, primarily targeting vertical SaaS and AI infrastructure assets.

That dynamic creates both opportunity and risk for firms like Amulet. On one hand, it validates the thesis that software assets are underpriced. On the other, it compresses hold periods and forces PE buyers to underwrite exit multiples more conservatively. Grossman's edge will be his ability to identify assets that strategics want but haven't found yet — businesses that are too small or too operationally messy for a corporate acquirer to touch today but could be cleaned up and repositioned within 3-5 years.

"The best deals are the ones where you see the exit buyer before you sign the LOI," Grossman said. "We're not buying software to hold forever. We're buying it to build into something a strategic will pay a premium for in four years."

For the 11 software companies currently in Amulet's portfolio, Grossman's promotion is a signal of continuity. He's been the primary board member or observer on nine of those investments, which means his relationships with management teams are already established. The change is that he'll now have more authority to greenlight add-on M&A, approve capital expenditures, and push for operational changes without needing sign-off from senior partners.

That autonomy could accelerate value creation. Several portfolio companies — including Vanta and Nexus Software — have been waiting on approval for bolt-on acquisitions that would expand their addressable markets. With Grossman now on the IC, those deals are more likely to move quickly.

It also raises expectations. Portfolio company CEOs know that Grossman's track record is now tied to their performance. If Amulet's software investments underperform, it'll reflect poorly on the partner who championed the strategy. That creates healthy pressure on both sides — Grossman to pick the right deals, and CEOs to execute on the value creation plans he's outlined.

"Adam doesn't let things slide," said one portfolio company CFO, speaking on background. "He's in the weeds on metrics every month. If your CAC payback period is drifting, he knows before you do. It's accountability, but it's also partnership — he's solving problems with you, not just pointing them out."

Grossman's rise comes at an inflection point for software-focused private equity. The zero-interest-rate era created a generation of PE firms that bought software companies at 15x ARR, levered them 6x, and exited at 18x to a strategic buyer or the public markets. That playbook is dead. Interest rates are higher, exit multiples are lower, and LPs are demanding cash-on-cash returns, not just IRR math propped up by leverage.

The firms that will succeed in the next cycle are the ones that can actually operate. They need to know how to optimize a sales funnel, when to kill a product line, how to renegotiate cloud infrastructure contracts, and when a 30% RIF is necessary versus performative. Grossman's background — banking plus operating chops — positions him well for that reality.

The data tells the story. Software PE deals now require operational intervention 78% of the time, up from 35% in 2021, according to a recent Bain & Company study. Entry multiples have compressed 43%, and hold periods have stretched by more than a year on average. That's the market Grossman is stepping into as a partner — one where execution matters more than financial engineering.

Amulet's bet is that the firms willing to do the work will earn outsized returns. The compressed entry multiples create margin for error. The longer hold periods create time to compound operational improvements. And the scarcity of exit opportunities means that the businesses that do get sold — the ones with real profitability and defensible moats — will command premium valuations.

Grossman's immediate priorities are tactical: close the two deals in diligence, finalize Fund III's fundraise, and shepherd three existing portfolio companies toward exit readiness by late 2027. But the longer-term question is whether he'll eventually succeed Chen and Whitmore as managing partner — a transition that's not imminent but also not unthinkable.

Both co-founders are in their early 50s and have signaled interest in stepping back from day-to-day deal work within the next decade. Grossman, at 39, is positioned as the next-generation leader, particularly if the software strategy continues to outperform. That succession plan isn't formalized, but it's understood within the firm and among LPs.

For now, though, the focus is narrower: prove that Amulet's software thesis works at scale, deliver top-quartile returns on Fund II, and set up Fund III for success. If Grossman can do that, the partnership will be remembered as the moment Amulet became a software-first firm — not just a generalist PE shop with a software tilt.

The promotion is official, but the hard part is just starting.

Personnel moves like this don't usually merit deep coverage. But Grossman's promotion is worth paying attention to because it encapsulates three broader trends: the migration of talent to emerging PE hubs, the operational shift in software investing, and the generational turnover happening across the industry.

First, Miami's ascent as a private equity center is no longer speculative. It's real. Grossman is the latest in a string of senior dealmakers — including partners from Vista, Thoma Bravo, and TA Associates — who've relocated to South Florida in the past three years. That migration is creating network effects: more talent attracts more capital, which attracts more service providers, which makes the ecosystem more self-sustaining.

Second, the shift from financial engineering to operational value creation is accelerating. The PE firms that thrived in the 2010s were built for a world where cheap debt and multiple expansion did most of the work. The firms that will thrive in the 2020s are the ones that can actually run companies — cut costs, optimize pricing, integrate acquisitions, and build durable competitive advantages. Grossman's track record suggests he's fluent in that new language.

Third, the industry is getting younger at the top. A generation of PE founders who started firms in the 1990s and 2000s is aging out, and the question of who takes over is becoming urgent. Firms that promote from within — like Amulet is doing with Grossman — are signaling confidence in their internal talent pipelines and creating clear succession pathways. That matters for LP perception, employee retention, and long-term stability.