Barings Supports Inverness Graham’s New Platform Investment in Cognito Forms

May 20, 2025 at 09:00 AM EDT

Barings, one of the world’s leading investment managers, today announced that it has served as lead agent and minority equity investor to provide financing support for Inverness Graham’s purchase of Cognito Forms (“Cognito” or “the Company”). Headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, Cognito Forms delivers an intuitive platform that empowers small and medium-sized businesses, non-profit organizations, and governments to streamline data collection, automate workflows, and enhance productivity—all without the need for a software developer.

Cognito’s platform supports complex organizational needs with powerful, logic-driven automations and advanced features that reflect real-world workflows and data, making its offering particularly well-suited for compliance-driven sectors such as healthcare, education, and legal.

“Barings deeply values the opportunity to partner with and support Inverness Graham and its investment in Cognito,” said Scott Chappell, Managing Director in Barings’ Global Private Finance Group. “We are confident that Inverness Graham’s significant experience with software and tech-enabled services will help the Company accelerate its growth.”

“As organizations further digitize critical business processes and heighten focus on data security, the workflow automation market is poised for substantial growth,” said Trey Sykes, Managing Principal at Inverness Graham. “Within this market, Cognito has developed a valuable application with a loyal and diversified customer base, and we are thrilled to partner with the team to drive accelerated growth in its next chapter.”

About Barings

Barings is a $442+ billion* global asset management firm that partners with institutional, insurance, and intermediary clients, and supports leading businesses with flexible financing solutions. The firm, a subsidiary of MassMutual, seeks to deliver excess returns by leveraging its global scale and capabilities across public and private markets in fixed income, real assets and capital solutions.

* As of March 31, 2025

About Inverness Graham Investments

Inverness Graham is a Philadelphia based buyout firm focused on acquiring innovative, high-growth companies where technology is transforming traditional industry. The firm’s Flagship strategy focuses on businesses in Healthcare, Tech-Enabled Services / Software and Advanced Manufacturing. The firm’s Green Light strategy targets tech-enabled businesses where Environmental Sustainability is a key driver of accelerating growth. Inverness Graham executes a differentiated, repeatable model for value creation through its proprietary Strategic Platform Build approach. Founded by senior executives of the Graham Group, the firm builds upon a 60-year legacy of operational excellence, bringing substantial value creation resources and an innovative mindset to support its portfolio company partners.