Crunchbase Data Shows AI’s Most Active Startups Are Becoming Serial Acquirers

A review of Crunchbase figures reveals that several of the artificial intelligence sector’s fastest-expanding startups are transitioning into serial acquirers, purchasing smaller enterprises to bridge product gaps, penetrate new markets, and secure specialized teams. While OpenAI stands out as the most frequent buyer by a wide margin, well-financed startups specializing in customer service, software development, and legal technology have also completed multiple acquisitions this year.

According to Crunchbase data, this purchasing surge brought acquisitions of AI startups by other venture-backed AI firms to 195 as of Sept. 29, marking a 14% increase compared to the entirety of 2025. Meanwhile, the total number of buyers grew by only 2%, demonstrating that increasingly active purchasers are responsible for the bulk of this growth.

Such transactions highlight a distinct phase of competition within the AI industry, where heavily funded startups leverage mergers and acquisitions to expand their offerings and reach new clientele much faster than through organic development. Within legal tech, for instance, acquisitions are integrating research, litigation tools, and regulatory monitoring into more comprehensive platforms.

Legora CFO David Eckstein outlined this strategy in a LinkedIn post earlier in the year regarding the company’s consecutive purchases of multiple startups, writing: “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 indicates that certain AI buyers have returned to the negotiating table repeatedly over recent years. Across a three-year timeframe, 67 repeat buyers were responsible for roughly 42% of all tracked transactions. OpenAI emerged as the clear leader with 20 AI-related purchases, which included 10 completed this year.

Additional repeat buyers for this year feature Anthropic and legal AI startup Legora, both of which announced five acquisitions, trailed by legal AI startup Harvey with four. Coding company Cursor and customer-service AI provider Sierra each completed three purchases this year, while Cohere reported two. A significant portion of these buyers consist of vertical AI startups purchasing businesses within their specific domains.

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

Rounding out the top five largest recorded deals in the dataset through Sept. 29 are Anthropic’s $400 million purchase of Coefficient Bio, a firm developing AI for pharmaceutical research; OpenAI’s $300 million buyout 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 for up to $285 million.

In total, financial terms were disclosed for merely 12 out of the 195 total deals, making it challenging to estimate total spending by AI startups on these acquisitions.

Dealmaking has undeniably accelerated as an increasing number of AI enterprises turn to acquisitions, adopting them as a recurring component of their expansion strategies. 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 such as Anthropic and Legora. “It’s faster to acquire a team or product than build it yourself. If you’re not growing 10x, you’re 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

An examination of the specific companies acquired sheds light on the objectives behind this heightened M&A activity.

OpenAI’s acquisitions span a broad spectrum, encompassing scientific-writing software, healthcare data, developer infrastructure, specialized talent, and security tools. The San Francisco-based enterprise announced three separate purchases during January alone, setting an aggressive pace for the year’s dealmaking.

Its acquisitions in January included:

• Convogo, 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 consumers, labs, hospitals, and wearables.
• Crixet, a platform offering LaTeX editing, error detection, and collaborative tools for teams.

In February, OpenAI participated in an acqui-hire involving open-source AI agent OpenClaw alongside its creator, Peter Steinberger. March brought plans to acquire Astral, known for creating open-source tools aimed at software developers, alongside Promptfoo, an open-source utility for testing AI applications.

By June, OpenAI reached an agreement to purchase Ona (formerly Gitpod), a provider of 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 firm that converts notes, prompts, and documents into editable presentation decks.

Vertical AI roll-ups

An analysis of Crunchbase data reveals that well-financed vertical AI startups, particularly within the legal technology sector, have likewise maintained an active pace in acquiring smaller entities.

Harvey, based in San Francisco, concentrated its AI-related purchases on filling gaps surrounding its primary platform. Hexus created tools geared toward generating product guides, videos, and product demos, whereas Lume built software facilitating the connection of customer applications and data with AI systems.

New York-based Benchmark developed software that assists asset managers in extracting insights from past investments to apply toward prospective deals, thereby broadening Harvey’s footprint in the asset management arena. Announced on Sept. 9, Harvey’s fourth known acquisition of the year was Guardrails AI, a developer of open-source tools utilized for managing, monitoring, and testing AI agents.

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

Citing 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 them to join our team.”

Furthermore, Burke characterized the company’s M&A approach 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 pursued a substantially broader legal-tech consolidation. The five announced acquisitions made by the Stockholm-based firm this year comprise:

• Walter AI, a nine-person Canadian startup whose agents operate directly inside Microsoft Outlook and Word;
• Qura, a Stockholm-based developer of AI-native legal research tools;
• Graceview, an Australian regulatory-intelligence platform tracking legal changes across more than 100 areas;
• Cadastral, a firm whose AI agents evaluate documents and data for commercial real estate enterprises; and
• Wexler AI, headquartered in London, which assists litigation teams in extracting facts from extensive document collections, spotting inconsistencies, and constructing case timelines.

Sierra’s acquisitions demonstrate a push to scale geographically and expand past standard customer-service automation. March saw the purchase of Tokyo-based enterprise AI startup Opera Tech to support its expansion within Japan, followed by Paris-based Fragment, which assists companies in automating operational workflows via AI. July brought the acquisition of TakeOff, a 14-month-old startup focused on building “long-horizon” agents.

For targets of these acquisitions, integrating with an expansive platform can present a rapid route to scale, even amid swift organic growth. TakeOff founder Aakash Thumaty noted in a July blog post that his enterprise maintained a “near 8-figure run rate” supported by a team of merely three individuals. “The advice for an AI startup growing at our pace is to hire out a sales team, raise again, and keep going,” he stated. Despite having “capital, customers, and great traction,” the Sierra acquisition provided a pathway to “accelerate our shared vision and simultaneously build it at a grander scale.”

This upward trajectory in M&A activity is propelled by an expanding circle of purchasers alongside increasingly active serial acquirers. Maintaining this velocity suggests that additional consolidation will unfold 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

?Frequently Asked Questions

01Why are AI startups increasingly acquiring other companies?

Well-funded AI startups are turning to mergers and acquisitions to accelerate their growth, enabling them to broaden their product offerings, enter new markets, and onboard specialized talent faster than they could by building everything internally.

02Which AI company has been the most active buyer?

According to Crunchbase data, OpenAI is by far the most active buyer, completing 20 AI-related acquisitions—including 10 this year alone.

03What are some of the largest recorded AI acquisitions mentioned?

The largest recorded deals include Nscale’s $1.65 billion acquisition of Anyscale, Cyera’s $1 billion acquisition of Oasis Security, and Anthropic’s $400 million acquisition of Coefficient Bio.

04Are financial terms disclosed for most of these deals?

No, financial prices were publicly disclosed for only 12 out of the 195 recorded transactions in the dataset.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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1. Our analysis is based on transactions in the Crunchbase dataset and doesn’t include deals that haven’t been publicly reported↩