Intermedia Intelligent Communications
A Sunnyvale provider of cloud phone, contact center and email for small businesses, sold through 7,500 partners. Private equity firm 26North bought it in May 2026, two years after it shelved an IPO.
Intermedia release, May 28, 2026- Valuation
- Not disclosed Neither the 2026 sale to 26North nor the 2017 sale to Madison Dearborn had a published price. Reuters sources in 2023 said a sale could top $1B including debt.
- Revenue
- $430M+ ARR Annual recurring revenue at the March 2026 deal announcement, with about 20% growth in the communications business. Last audited revenue: $310.3M in 2022.
- Watch
- New owner 26North, Josh Harris's roughly $37B investment platform, closed the purchase May 28, 2026. CEO Michael Gold and his team stayed on as investors.
- AI
- AI Receptionist A voice agent that answers calls and hands off to staff, in open beta from Sep 2026 with general availability expected in Oct 2026.
- Liquidity
- No public market The IPO was withdrawn in Feb 2024 with no shares sold. No staff tender offer has been reported.
- Hiring
- 53 → 46 remote listings since Oct 10.
Phones are overtaking email as the core business.
Intermedia sells Unite (cloud phone, video, chat), a contact center, and business cloud apps such as hosted Microsoft email, archiving and security, mostly through channel partners. The split below is recurring revenue (ARR), not revenue: UCaaS ARR grew 31% in 2022 while the apps line grew 1.6%.
- 1A partner channel built around reseller ownershipOver 7,500 channel partners. Its Customer Ownership Reseller (CORE) model lets partners keep the customer relationship and billing.Intermedia release, May 28, 2026
- 2Support and uptime as a selling pointJ.D. Power has certified its assisted technical support nine times, and it offers financially backed 99.999% uptime SLAs.Intermedia release, Oct 15, 2026
- 3A large base of small business customers, plus NEC'sMore than 150,000 business customers in 2026, up from about 134,000 at end 2022. It took over NEC's UNIVERGE BLUE cloud business in North America in 2024.Intermedia release, Oct 15, 2026; Form S-1/A, May 1, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)
- RingCentral$6.88Blisted, Oct 30 close
- Five9$2.72Blisted, Oct 30 close
Private values are the last reported round; they can be stale. Listed values are market value. Bars start at zero.
Every round, and what its terms give away.
Intermedia Intelligent Communications is private, so there is no share price. What its investors paid, and on what terms, is the closest thing to one.
- $430M
- ARR, as of Mar 31
About $100M EBITDA in 2026 per unnamed sources (Octus). Last audited year (2022): revenue $310.3M, net loss $36.7M, adjusted EBITDA $37.0M. The 20% growth figure covers only the communications business.
Intermedia release, Mar 31, 2026; Octus, Apr 23, 2026; Form S-1/A, May 1, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)- May 28Buyout (26North)Led by 26North PartnersBought from Madison Dearborn funds; agreed Mar 31, closed May 28. Price not disclosed. About $400M of direct-lender debt reported to fund it.Intermedia release, May 28, 2026; Octus, Apr 23, 2026
- Sep 27Buyout (Madison Dearborn)Led by Madison Dearborn PartnersPrice undisclosed. Gave an exit to Nokia Growth Partners (invested 2012); Oak Hill had bought Intermedia in 2011. The S-1 dates the acquisition to 2017.Global Venturing, Sep 27, 2016
- Down or flat versus the last deal?Neither the 2016/2017 nor the 2026 sale price was disclosed, so there is no comparison. Reuters sources said in 2023 the owner sought over $1B including debt; that sale did not happen then.Reuters via Global Banking & Finance Review, Aug 10, 2023Open
- Time since the last dealThe buyout closed May 28, 2026, about five months ago, so the new owner is at the start of its hold.Intermedia release, May 28, 2026Clear
- Debt-heavy termsAbout $400M of new debt against about $100M of EBITDA, both from unnamed sources (roughly 4x, our arithmetic). The prior unitranche paid SOFR plus 5.25%.Octus, Apr 23, 2026Flag
- Who ledA new outside owner, 26North, founded in 2022 by Apollo co-founder Josh Harris, managing about $37B. Jefferies ran the sale for Intermedia.Intermedia release, May 28, 2026; Intermedia release, Mar 31, 2026Clear
- Employee liquidityA control sale; management reinvested. No tender offer or staff secondary found, and how employee options were treated at the 2026 close is not disclosed.Intermedia release, May 28, 2026; news search Nov 3, 2026Open
- Layoffs in the last 12 monthsA news search on Nov 3, 2026 found no reported Intermedia layoffs. Ask in interviews whether the ownership change brought restructuring.News search Nov 3, 2026Clear
Clear: checked, nothing found. Flag: found, with the source. Open: could not be checked.
Intermedia Intelligent Communications's revenue, year by year.
- Five9$0.41M
- RingCentral$0.36M
A $345M refinancing in 2024 ran to 2029; a new $400M direct-lender facility was reported to fund the 2026 buyout and may replace it (not confirmed). At end 2022 debt was $303.6M.
What the record says, and what we think it means.
The fact is the source's. The read, in italics, is ours.
- 01Neutral
Sold to 26North after nine years with Madison Dearborn.
Intermedia release, May 28, 2026Agreed Mar 31, 2026 and closed May 28, 2026; terms undisclosed. 26North says it will back AI, international growth, vertical markets and acquisitions.
A new owner usually brings a new plan and a debt load. Management staying as investors suggests continuity for now.
- 02Watch
Spent three years on file for an IPO, then withdrew.
Form RW, Feb 21, 2024 (SEC EDGAR); SEC EDGAR filing index, CIK 0001835104Filed an S-1 in Feb 2021 for Nasdaq under INTM, amended it nine times through May 2023, and withdrew on Feb 21, 2024 with no shares sold.
The listing window closed for many software firms in that period. The filings remain the best public look at its finances.
- 03Watch
Much of the revenue rides on Microsoft.
Form S-1/A, May 1, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)38% of 2022 revenue relied on Microsoft products such as hosted Exchange and Microsoft 365, and Microsoft can end those terms on notice, per the S-1.
That line was growing only 1.6% a year in 2022. The phone business is the growth story; email is the legacy.
- 04Watch
Loss-making on paper at its last disclosure.
Form S-1/A, May 1, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)2022 net loss $36.7M on $310.3M revenue, adjusted EBITDA $37.0M. Monthly customer churn averaged 1.0%.
Older numbers. Reported 2026 EBITDA of about $100M implies margins improved a lot since, but that figure is from unnamed sources.
- 05Good
Took over NEC's cloud phone business.
Intermedia release, Sep 24, 2024; Intermedia release, Jun 3, 2026In Sep 2024 Intermedia agreed to assume NEC's UNIVERGE BLUE UCaaS and contact center contracts in North America and NEC partner ties in Europe. In June 2026 it launched cloud calling with KDDI in Japan.
Inheriting customers from a hardware maker leaving the market is a cheap way to grow. Japan is a new frontier for the team.
- 06Good
Healthcare is now its top industry.
Intermedia release, Oct 15, 2026About 15,000 healthcare accounts. In Oct 2026 it added scheduling, forms, payments and links to 15 EHR and practice systems.
A vertical push matches 26North's stated plan. Healthcare data raises the compliance bar for staff.
What the hiring data says.
We save every company's roles, pay by team and level, AI share and churn every day, so each month this page can say more. Sparklines use their own scale.
Can AI agents do business with Intermedia Intelligent Communications?
We checked the agent payment programs, developer docs and site rules an AI assistant would meet.
Builds agents, does not publish for them. Its product now ships AI voice agents, but there is no llms.txt and no official MCP server.
Still Remote read- Not foundDocs that AI tools can readintermedia.com/llms.txt and /llms-full.txt both return 404. No official developer portal surfaced in search.checked Nov 3, 2026
- YesLets AI crawlers read its siterobots.txt has one rule set for all bots: it blocks only /wp-admin/ and /search/. No AI bot is named or blocked.checked Nov 3, 2026
- Not foundAn official MCP serverNone published by Intermedia. A community server (lrn2codenow/cac-blue-mcp) wraps the Unite Voice API; Glama lists it as untested.Glama listing
- YesAgents inside its own productAI Receptionist answers calls, finds intent, transfers and leaves a recap; set up in a no-code AI Builder. Part of a Digital Teammates line of AI Assistants and AI Agents.Intermedia release, Sep 10, 2026
- YesAI in the contact centerAI Agent Assist (Apr 2025) gives live transcription, sentiment, knowledge lookup and AI call recaps; AI Supervisor Assist followed in Jul 2025.Intermedia release, Apr 9, 2025
Where Intermedia Intelligent Communications puts AI to work.
- 1AI is built into the product, not bought inIts SPARK AI suite adds features such as AI Agent Assist and AI Recap to its own contact center, sold to existing partners and customers.Intermedia release, Apr 9, 2025
- 2The new owner brings an operations team26North's in-house Alpha Creation Team works with management on product, distribution and operations, and AI innovation is a stated priority.Intermedia release, Mar 31, 2026
- 3A large share of staff build productAlmost 35% of full-time equivalent staff worked on intellectual property development at end 2022, per the S-1. No AI-linked job cuts reported.Form S-1/A, May 1, 2023 (SEC EDGAR)
As many listings as on Sep 7, most of them in engineering.
The signals, and which way they push.
- TailwindThe phone business is growing fast.
About 20% growth in communications in 2026 and UCaaS ARR up 31% in 2022.
- TailwindOld phone systems are moving to the cloud.
It inherited NEC's cloud base and cites millions of on-premises NEC PBX seats in Japan as a migration market.
- HeadwindThe email business is a slow fade.
Business cloud apps grew 1.6% in 2022 and depend on Microsoft's terms.
- HeadwindBuyout debt caps spending.
About $400M of new debt was reported to fund the 2026 buyout, at private-credit rates.
Where Intermedia Intelligent Communications ends up, if we had to bet.
Our calls, not facts. Each one is tied to something that already happened, so you can judge the reasoning.
- 1
Intermedia files for a US IPO again by 2031.
Long shot 16%IPOIt got as far as nine S-1 amendments before withdrawing in 2024. A new private equity owner usually holds for several years, and a sale to another buyer is the more common exit.
Form RW, Feb 21, 2024 (SEC EDGAR) - 2
Intermedia buys at least two more cloud or vertical businesses by 2031.
Likely 72%M&A26North named strategic acquisitions as a plan at closing. The NEC takeover showed the playbook of absorbing customers from vendors leaving the market.
Intermedia release, May 28, 2026 - 3
ARR passes $700M by 2031.
Coin flip 50%RevenueIt was $430M+ in 2026 with communications growing about 20%. The email line barely grows, so the blended rate is lower; about 10% a year would get there (our arithmetic).
Intermedia release, Mar 31, 2026 - 4
Most new Intermedia phone seats come with an AI agent answering at least some calls.
Likely 72%AIAI Receptionist moved from beta toward general availability in Oct 2026 and is configured without code. Its Digital Teammates line frames agents as standard staff tools.
Intermedia release, Sep 10, 2026 - 5
Intermedia stays a channel-led small business specialist rather than a top-three UCaaS vendor.
Likely 72%CompetitionIts edge is 7,500 partners who own the customer relationship. RingCentral, Zoom and Microsoft Teams compete at far larger scale.
Intermedia release, May 28, 2026
Read by the Still Remote research agent on November 3, 2026 from the sources linked on this page. Facts and scenarios only, not investment advice.