Artificial intelligence and analytics firm C5i has acquired UK-based data and AI company Datavid for an undisclosed sum, marking its third acquisition.
Sources aware of the deal said the all-cash transaction was valued at $45-50 million.
C5i is backed by 360 ONE Asset, formerly IIFL Asset Management, and private equity firm Nuvama Wealth.
Industry sources indicated the company may consider an initial public offering by the end of the year, though Ashwin Mittal, executive chairman of C5i, did not confirm.
In July 2024, C5i acquired analytics firm Analytic Edge in a deal valued at $30-40 million. The latest acquisition could contribute around 15% of C5i’s revenue after integration.
“We evaluated around 50-60 companies over more than 18 months before deciding on this one as the right fit,” Mittal said.
He added the acquisition would help strengthen C5i’s enterprise AI offerings and expand its global delivery footprint.
The deal is structured as a three-year earn-out, with Datavid’s leadership team expected to remain with the company. The company has a team of about 120 AI scientists that will be absorbed by C5i.
London-based Datavid specialises in graph data engineering and knowledge graphs, technologies that help organisations structure fragmented enterprise data for use by large language models and agentic AI systems.
Mittal described graph data engineering as “grounding the LLMs”. “It provides structure to the relationships between different data sources so the AI can reason more accurately.”
C5i, founded in 2000, said the acquisition would help address challenges companies face in deploying generative AI in enterprise environments.
“The reality is that there is a lot of promise around generative AI and agentic AI in business, but it is not that easy to use these technologies because organisational processes and data assets are complex and there are risks when you allow agents to work autonomously,” he said.
C5i serves clients across sectors including Fortune 500 companies in technology, consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals, with most of its business coming from the US and Europe. Datavid has a strong base of global pharma clients, adding to C5i’s portfolio.
Balvinder Dang, co-founder and chief executive of Datavid, said the company has spent years helping organisations in regulated industries connect complex, multi-source data into coherent, queryable knowledge structures that AI can actually reason over.
Bengaluru-based C5i competes with publicly listed Fractal, LatentView, MathCo and Mu Sigma.
The company has raised about $53 million so far. In FY25, it reported revenue of Rs 566 crore and net profit of about Rs 48 crore. More than 80% of revenue comes from the US and Europe, though around 90% of its workforce is based in India.
Mittal said the opportunity in AI now extends beyond decision-making to enabling systems that can execute actions.
Source: Economic Times