LONDON, January 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Balderton Capital, Europe's leading venture capital firm, congratulates MySQL, which has agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for a total consideration of approximately $1 billion.

Balderton and its affiliate Benchmark Capital US were early investors in MySQL which is the developer of the world's most popular open source database. Balderton Capital held about 15% of MySQL. This exit will produce a substantial return for investors in Balderton's Fund I.

The database software developed by MySQL has been deployed by many leading internet and technology companies including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile. MySQL has its headquarters in Uppsala, Sweden and Cupertino, California, USA.

Barry Maloney, partner at Balderton Capital said: "We are thrilled that Sun Microsystems recognised the value in MySQL, a company that is at the forefront of building the future of the web. We congratulate Kevin Harvey, Marten Mickos and the rest of the board and management team at MySQL and are confident that they will go on to achieve greater success as part of Sun.

"This has been a great investment for Balderton and emphasises our position as an investor of choice for fast growing technology and media companies."

About Balderton Capital

Balderton Capital is one of Europe's largest venture capital firms, committed to finding and helping talented entrepreneurs build great companies. Based in London, it manages approximately USD 1.5 billion in committed venture capital.

Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 70 companies across a wide variety of technology sectors and geographies, including the UK, mainland Europe, the US and China. Notable investments include Alphyra (Europe's largest payment-processing network), Bebo (the leading social networking site), Codemasters (the developer and publisher of innovative video games), Habbo Hotel (the teen social networking site), MySQL (the open-source database business) and Setanta Sports (the European sports pay-tv broadcaster).

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high-performance, affordable database products. The company's flagship offering is 'MySQL Enterprise', a comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools, and premium support services. MySQL is the world's most popular open source database software. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, business-critical systems and packaged software -- including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Google, Nokia, YouTube and Booking.com. With headquarters in the United States and Sweden -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs. For more information about MySQL, please visit http://www.mysql.com/.

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