One of the most important tools for big investment portfolios was built in Boise, Idaho. Clearwater Analytics did the accounting for trillions of dollars of investments held by insurers, corporate treasuries and asset managers. Before it, many of those firms pulled data from banks and custodians into spreadsheets by hand. Clearwater gathered it every night and checked it, so clients woke up to a clean set of books. It went public in September 2021.

One Clean Set of Books

Clearwater was founded in Boise in 2004. The bet was that investment accounting, a dull and error-prone job, could run as a single web service shared by every client. Clearwater pulled holdings and trades from many custodians, matched them, and produced reports for accountants, regulators and boards. Insurance companies became a core market. Clients paid fees based on the assets the software tracked.

Eighteen Dollars to $24.55

Clearwater priced its IPO at $18 a share in September 2021 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as CWAN. In 2025 it bought Enfusion, a maker of software for hedge funds and asset managers. In December 2025 it agreed to be acquired by a group led by Permira with Warburg Pincus, Francisco Partners and Temasek. The deal closed on June 25, 2026, at $24.55 a share, about $7.4 billion in cash to shareholders.

Cover: Brook in the Clearing, Charles François Daubigny. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a clear brook (Clearwater).