Comparables.ai Raises $6 Million to Find M&A Deals With A.I.

Finnish start-up Comparables.ai has raised a $6 million seed round to push its A.I. platform deeper into M&A deal sourcing. The Helsinki company says the problem is simple: buyers often see only a slice of the possible targets, and that can skew the whole process.

The platform already gives users access to data on more than 370 million companies worldwide. It is used by more than 50,000 professionals in over 30 countries, and one of the Big Four advisory firms is extending its deployment to more than 10 countries. The new funding will go toward expansion into more markets and improvements to the company’s A.I. engine.

Pragmatech Venture Capital and Araya Ventures led the round, with support from Purple Ventures, Gorilla Capital, hi5 Ventures, Somersault Ventures and other investors. Pragmatech’s Artem Yaremchuk said the firm was persuaded by the customer base, the proof that the product helps in day-to-day work and the team’s M&A background. He also described the market as still stuck with legacy, filter-based tools.

Comparables.ai is aimed at corporate development teams, private equity firms, M&A advisors and investment banks, especially in the mid-market. Users type in the kind of market they want to explore, and the system returns matching companies with financials, ownership structures and decision makers, pulling together private company data, group structures, valuations, past transactions and verified contacts. Co-founder Martin Kangasniemi says that if you cannot see the full field, you cannot run the best process.

The company was founded by four people. Niko Nalli, Markus Vesala and Kangasniemi all bring M&A advisory and financial markets experience, while CTO Muhammad Ammad-ud-din has a Ph.D. in computer science from Aalto University and postdoctoral research at the University of Helsinki on machine-learning methods that combine data from many sources. That research angle matters here, because the product is trying to make sense of patchy company data across countries and jurisdictions.

The competition is not small. Comparables.ai is up against PitchBook, S&P Capital IQ and Moody’s Orbis, plus newer rivals such as Grata, now part of Datasite, and Helsinki-based Inven, which raised $12.75 million last year for its own private-market deal sourcing tool.