Data Reveals AI Startups Are Rapidly Acquiring Rivals

Based on a review of Crunchbase data, several of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence startups are transforming into serial acquirers, purchasing smaller enterprises to fill product gaps, enter fresh markets, and bring specialized teams in-house. While OpenAI remains by far the most active buyer in this space, well-funded startups specializing in customer service, legal tech, and software development have also completed multiple acquisitions this year.

According to Crunchbase figures, this buying spree has driven the acquisition of AI startups by other venture-backed AI companies up to 195 through Sept. 29—representing a 14% increase compared to the entirety of 2025. Meanwhile, the total number of buyers grew by just 2%, signaling that increasingly active acquirers are responsible for the bulk of this growth.

These transactions highlight a fresh wave of competition within the AI sector, where well-funded startups use mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to expand their product suites and reach new customers faster than organic development allows. In the legal tech sector, for instance, acquisitions are integrating research, litigation tools, and regulatory monitoring into more comprehensive platforms.

David Eckstein, CFO of Legora, detailed this strategic calculus in a LinkedIn post earlier this year regarding the firm’s back-to-back acquisitions of multiple startups, stating: “M&A is explicitly part of how we accelerate what we’re building. The question we always ask is: does this deal get us somewhere faster than we’d get there ourselves?”

Repeat buyers step up dealmaking

Crunchbase data reveals that several AI acquirers have returned to the negotiating table multiple times over recent years. Across a three-year period, 67 repeat buyers accounted for approximately 42% of all tracked transactions. OpenAI emerged as the most prolific, recording 20 AI-related acquisitions, including 10 executed this year.

Additional repeat buyers for this year include Anthropic and legal AI startup Legora, which have each announced five acquisitions, closely followed by legal AI startup Harvey with four. Coding company Cursor and customer-service AI provider Sierra have each completed three acquisitions this year, while Cohere has announced two. Many of these buyers operate as vertical AI startups absorbing companies within their respective industries.

Several transactions completed this year feature substantial price tags. Nscale’s reported $1.65 billion purchase of Anyscale stands as the largest deal with a disclosed price, followed by Cyera’s $1 billion acquisition of identity security startup Oasis Security.

Additional top deals recorded in the dataset through Sept. 29 include Anthropic’s $400 million acquisition of Coefficient Bio, a developer of AI for pharmaceutical research; OpenAI’s $300 million purchase of Glass Imaging, a Los Altos, California-based startup utilizing customized AI in camera hardware for computational photography; and Sword Health’s acquisition of Kaia Health, which was valued at up to $285 million.

In total, financial terms were disclosed for only 12 out of the 195 deals, leaving overall spending figures for AI startup acquisitions difficult to quantify.

Dealmaking has clearly accelerated as more AI companies pivot toward acquisitions, frequently integrating them as a recurring component of their growth blueprints. 1

“It’s all about speed in the AI world,” notes Rama Sekhar, a partner at Menlo Ventures, a firm that has backed numerous AI startups, including Legora and Anthropic. “It’s faster to acquire a team or product than build it yourself. If you’re not growing 10x, you’宁 not interesting to growth investors, which leaves a gap in the funding market for AI startups that need a home. High valuations have also given AI startups cheap currency to use their stock to get these deals done with minimal dilution.”

What AI startups are buying — and why

The identities of the acquired companies offer valuable context regarding what AI startups hope to achieve through their intensified M&A activity.

OpenAI’s purchases span a diverse range, encompassing scientific-writing software, healthcare data, developer infrastructure, security tools, and niche talent. The San Francisco-based enterprise announced three separate acquisitions in January alone, establishing a rapid pace for the rest of the year.

Its January acquisitions included:

• Convogo, a creator of AI software designed to assist executive coaches in automating leadership assessment reports.
• Torch Health, an AI-driven health application intended to consolidate fragmented medical records sourced from labs, hospitals, wearables, and consumers.
• Crixet, a platform offering error detection, LaTeX editing, and team collaboration capabilities.

In February, OpenAI participated in an acqui-hire transaction involving Peter Steinberger and his open-source AI agent project, OpenClaw. March brought announcements of plans to acquire Astral, a developer of open-source software tools for engineers, alongside Promptfoo, an open-source utility for testing AI applications.

In June, OpenAI agreed to purchase Ona (formerly Gitpod), which supplies secure cloud environments allowing developers—and increasingly, AI agents—to maintain work sessions after a user closes their laptop. August marked the acquisition of Instant, an AI presentation company capable of converting notes, prompts, and documents into editable slideshows.

Vertical AI roll-ups

Data from Crunchbase shows that well-funded vertical AI startups, particularly within the legal tech domain, have also maintained an aggressive acquisition schedule this year.

Harvey, based in San Francisco, targeted acquisitions to round out its core platform. Lume built software helping enterprises connect applications and customer data to AI systems, while Hexus specialized in tools for generating product guides, videos, and demos.

New York-based Benchmark engineered software assisting asset managers in drawing insights from historical investments to evaluate new opportunities, thereby expanding Harvey’s footprint in asset management. Announced on Sept. 9, Harvey’s fourth known acquisition of the year was Guardrails AI, an enterprise constructing open-source tools to monitor, test, and govern AI agents.

Katie Burke, COO of Harvey, informed Crunchbase News that the startup’s M&A strategy centers on finding “technical talent with high ownership and deep experience in legal tech or an adjacent space to legal.”

Highlighting Benchmark as a prime example, she noted that its co-founders “know the asset management space cold, and their name was dropped so many times in customer conversations that it was a natural fit for their team to join us.”

Burke characterized Harvey’s approach to M&A as “selective but aggressive.”

“We hold an incredibly high bar for talent and when we identify an additive company, we move quickly and will continue to do so this year and beyond,” she added.

Legora has undertaken an even broader legal-tech consolidation strategy. The Stockholm-based company announced five acquisitions this year, which include:

• Walter AI, a Canadian nine-person startup whose agents operate directly inside Microsoft Outlook and Word;
• Qura, a Stockholm-based creator of AI-native legal research tools;
• Graceview, an Australian regulatory-intelligence system tracking legal updates across more than 100 subject areas;
• Cadastral, a firm utilizing AI agents to analyze data and documents for commercial real estate businesses; and
• Wexler AI, a London-based company that aids litigation teams in extracting facts from extensive document repositories, identifying inconsistencies, and assembling case timelines.

Sierra’s acquisitions demonstrate an ambition to broaden its geographic reach and push past traditional customer-service automation boundaries. In March, the company acquired Opera Tech, a Tokyo-based enterprise AI startup, to support its expansion in Japan, followed by the purchase of Fragment, a Paris-based firm helping businesses automate operational workflows via AI. July saw Sierra acquire TakeOff, a 14-month-old startup engineering “long-horizon” agents.

For target companies, integrating into a larger platform offers an expedited route to scale, even amid rapid independent growth. Aakash Thumaty, founder of TakeOff, wrote in a July blog post that his three-person team was generating a “near 8-figure run rate.” He noted, “The advice for an AI startup growing at our pace is to hire out a sales team, raise again, and keep going.” Although his team possessed “capital, customers, and great traction,” the Sierra acquisition provided a unique chance to “accelerate our shared vision and simultaneously build it at a grander scale.”

This upswing in M&A activity is propelled by an expanded cohort of buyers alongside increasingly active serial acquirers, establishing a trend that is poised to yield further deals in the months and years ahead.

Related Crunchbase queries:

• AI Startups Acquiring AI Startups
• Most Acquisitive Startups Between 2021 And 2026

Related reading:

• Data: OpenAI Has Already Done Nearly As Many M&A Deals In 2026 As It Did All of Last Year
• Startups Are Still Acquiring Startups, Led By Ultra-High-Valuation Unicorns
• Your AI Strategy May Be Destroying Your Exit Value