Houlihan Lokey Advises Smallpdf on the Sale of PDFTools

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Smallpdf AG, the Swiss company behind sign.com and smallpdf.com, one of the world’s most popular PDF software suites, has sold its subsidiary PDFTools AG to Apryse, a global leader in document processing technology and portfolio company of Thoma Bravo and Silversmith Capital Partners.

Based in Zurich, PDFTools brings deep expertise in high-performance PDF conversion and compression, areas where quality, accuracy, and consistency are critical for compliance and large-scale document workflows. In addition, PDFTools has introduced AI Smart Redact, a self-hosted, deployable capability designed to identify and securely remove sensitive data from documents with high accuracy—particularly valuable in regulated and security-conscious environments.

Combined with Apryse’s existing platform, these capabilities strengthen its server-side document processing foundation, delivering higher performance, greater fidelity, and more robust handling of complex document operations. Together, they expand what Apryse can offer customers, building mission-critical document workflows across industries such as software, financial services, healthcare, education, and government.

The acquisition expands Apryse’s global customer footprint, adding a strong European presence and further accelerating the company’s growth across key rest-of-world markets. It also strengthens Apryse’s ability to deliver high-performance, enterprise-grade document processing technology for developers. Apryse’s customers, including 85% of the Fortune 100, will now have access to expanded capabilities through PDFTools’ specialized technology.

“PDFTools brings highly specialised expertise in areas like PDF/A conversion and compression that are critical for our customers,” said Cassidy Smirnow, CEO of Apryse. “For developers, AI Smart Redaction builds on our success helping teams embed critical AI-powered document workflows directly into their applications. By combining PDFTools with our platform, we’re expanding capabilities and setting a new standard for performance and quality of document processing.”

“This is a great outcome for both businesses,“ said Moritz Werner, CEO of Smallpdf. “Apryse widens its product offering by adding PDFTools’ fantastic technology and at the same time expands its global footprint, while Smallpdf can now put its full focus on its consumer and business PDF software platform serving tens of millions of users per month.“

Houlihan Lokey acted as the exclusive financial advisor to the shareholders of Smallpdf. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

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