[7] Francisco Partners was founded in August 1999,[8] in Menlo Park, California, during the emergence of dedicated technology buyout firms.

[9] Founders Sanford Robertson, Dipanjan Deb, David Stanton, Benjamin Ball, and Neil Garfinkel came from a variety of private equity firms.

[9] Among its notable early investments, in 2000 the firm paid $375 million in cash to purchase 90% of Advanced Micro Devices' communications products division.

[12] The firm purchased NPTest in 2003, the semiconductor-testing unit of Schlumberger,[14] and by the following year Francisco Partners had more than 30 active portfolio companies.

[36][38] In late 2016, Francisco Partners launched its Agility fund, raising approximately $600 million of committed capital to focus on smaller technology deals.

[39] Shortly afterwards, Francisco Partners invested in Dynamo Software,[40] Pet Circle,[41] Discovery Education,[42] and myON, the latter of which was sold in 2018.

[59] Also in 2018, Blackstone Inc.'s Strategic Capital Group and Goldman Sachs' Petershill program acquired a minority stake in Francisco Partners.

[60] In 2020, Francisco Partners joined Diligent Corporation's Modern Leadership Initiative and pledged to create five new board roles among its portfolio companies for gender or ethnically diverse candidates.

[71] In May 2021, Francisco Partners and TPG Capital agreed to acquire cloud-based integration business Boomi from Dell for $4 billion.

These assets included Health Insights, MarketScan, Clinical Development, Social Program Management, Micromedex, and imaging software offerings.

[79] In July 2023, together with TPG Inc., Francisco Partners agreed to acquire web tracking and analytics firm New Relic in an all-cash deal valued at $6.5 billion.

[31][8] Francisco Partners is currently led by CEO Dipanjan Deb, one of the firm's founders,[33] along with Ezra Perlman and Deep Shah, co-presidents, and David Golob, the chief investment officer.

[10] Top-ranked in 2020 among tech specialist private equity firms,[85][86] Francisco Partners has a list of portfolio companies that changes frequently.