Mergers & Acquisitions · Completed deal · Buy-side advisory

Ekimetrics acquires Actable: US customer analytics joins the Elevate plan

How the French specialist in data science and applied artificial intelligence signed the first acquisition in its history. This case study on the Ekimetrics–Actable acquisition sets out the need, the approach, the stakes and the macroeconomic view of a transatlantic deal that brings the group customer analytics from the US market, in support of a published ambition: global leadership in data and AI deployment by 2028.

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50%

of the acquirer's revenue generated internationally

group offices: Paris, London, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong

Actable offices: New York and Portland

2026

the group's first acquisition, announced on 2 February

The acquirer

Ekimetrics: French data science on a global scale

Founded in Paris in 2006 by Jean-Baptiste Bouzige, Ekimetrics is a specialist in data science and artificial intelligence applied to marketing and sales effectiveness and to P&L optimisation — with long-standing leadership in marketing mix modelling for major global brands. The privately held group operates from five offices — Paris, London, New York, Shanghai and Hong Kong — generates 50% of its revenue outside France and reports double-digit annual organic growth. Its strategy is set out in the Elevate plan: to become the global leader in deploying managed data and AI solutions at scale by 2028 — through acceleration in North America, function-specific AI use cases and strategic partnerships — a roadmap of which this first acquisition is the founding act.

The target's core expertise: turning customer data into actionable predictive models.

EK Ekimetrics Data science & AI — Paris · 5 offices on 3 continents (2006) ekimetrics.com

A Actable AI-powered customer analytics — New York & Portland actable.com

The seller

Actable: AI-powered customer analytics for the US market

Based in New York and in Portland, Oregon, Actable is the US specialist in AI-powered customer analytics: its Intelligence Factory turns raw customer data into structured intelligence — a suite of standard predictive models covering purchase propensity, churn risk and customer lifetime value — to drive marketing activation and measurable results. Its distinctive edge is twofold: a rare position bridging data engineering, analytics and marketing execution, and accredited technology specialisations — a Google Cloud partner with the Marketing Analytics specialisation, and a Databricks partner — which give it enterprise credibility with marketing leadership teams. Continuity has been published with remarkable precision: the entire team is retained, the company operates independently throughout 2026, and its leadership team — led by CEO Matt Greitzer — remains responsible for client success and operations.

Media coverage

What the press said about the Ekimetrics–Actable deal

The deal, announced in early February 2026, is documented by three voices — the acquirer, the target and the trade press:

Official press release · EkimetricsFebruary 2026 Ekimetrics signs its first acquisition and moves towards global leadership in data and AI deployment (in French)

The acquirer's press release places the deal within the Elevate strategic plan — to become the global leader in deploying managed data and AI solutions at scale by 2028 — whose roadmap it puts into action: acceleration in North America, highly specialised use cases, strategic partnerships. It details what the target brings — the suite of standard predictive models, from purchase propensity to customer lifetime value — and positions the group: 50% of revenue already generated outside France, from North America to Asia.

Actable · the target's own voice2 February 2026 What the Ekimetrics Acquisition Means for Actable and Our Clients

Unusually, the target itself explains the deal to its clients: the post sets out the complementary strengths — consumer-level customer analytics rooted in the US market on one side, global scale and leadership in marketing mix modelling on the other — the absence of overlap between client bases, and the continuity commitments: entire team retained, operational independence throughout 2026, leadership in place. This transparency towards the market speaks to how carefully the integration was prepared.

Viuz · French marketing and data trade pressFebruary 2026 Ekimetrics signs its first acquisition and moves towards global leadership (in French)

France's leading digital marketing and data publication relays the announcement to the ecosystem — marketing leaders, agencies, software vendors — and highlights its mechanics: Ekimetrics' long-standing expertise in marketing performance drivers and P&L optimisation, enriched by Actable's granular view of customer intelligence and its traceability across systems — the key infrastructure for deploying data and AI strategies across all the activities of large groups.

The deal rationale

Why Ekimetrics acquired Actable, and why this target

For Ekimetrics, the challenge was to deliver Elevate — and to open, for the first time in twenty years of organic growth, the lever of external growth. “To offer our clients an even more integrated data and AI value chain”, as founder and CEO Jean-Baptiste Bouzige puts it: to its long-standing leadership in marketing mix modelling — the top-down view that guides investment decisions — the deal adds the bottom-up view, analytics at the level of the individual customer: their propensity, churn risk and lifetime value. It is also the North American acceleration set out in the plan: Actable brings an established local team and a base of US clients with no overlap with the group's own — expansion without cannibalisation, in the world's largest market for data consulting.

The strategic stake: combining the portfolio-level view of marketing mix modelling with the customer-level view of US analytics.

On the target side, Actable had exactly the profile of a successful first acquisition: frictionless complementarity — customer-level analytics where the acquirer excels at portfolio level, client bases with no direct overlap, geographies that fit together; verifiable assets — the suite of proprietary predictive models, the Google Cloud and Databricks accredited specialisations, published client references up to the TransUnion case study; and a corporate culture whose alignment, stressed on both sides, was treated as a condition of the deal. The bridge between data engineering, analytics and marketing execution — the rare position few partners occupy — becomes the missing building block in the group's integrated value chain.

The macroeconomic view

Data and AI consulting enters an era of consolidation

This deal illustrates the reshaping of data and artificial intelligence consulting: generative AI is raising the expectations of executive teams, marketing budgets are under unprecedented scrutiny, and the announced disappearance of advertising identifiers is giving marketing mix modelling — the long-standing discipline of acquirers such as Ekimetrics — a relevance the market has not seen for twenty years. Around this demand, the landscape is taking shape: cloud ecosystems — Google, Databricks — accredit their partners and concentrate deal flow, analytics boutiques born alongside customer data platforms are seeking scale, and firms that want to serve large global groups must bring together strategy, models and execution — consolidation in the sector has only just begun.

The deal also tells a remarkable French story: after industry — materials, plastics processing — it is now French professional services that are crossing the Atlantic as acquirers: the Paris-based data science specialist, with five offices on three continents and half of its business outside France, is acquiring an established US team to deliver the North American acceleration in its plan. The approach chosen protects what creates value: the entire team retained, operational independence maintained throughout 2026, the target's founder at the helm — a first-time acquirer's first deal, executed with the caution of a veteran, in full view of the market the target itself addressed.

A transatlantic acquisition: Paris-based data science sets up in New York and Portland.

Our advisory role

How Collaboration Capital added value as buy-side adviser

On this deal, Collaboration Capital acted as buy-side adviser. A first acquisition — the one that sets a group's M&A doctrine — unfolds in four stages, and the data and AI consulting market imposes its own codes on each of them.

A clear understanding of the mandate

Scoping a first acquisition involves more than a target: it lays down the doctrine. For a consulting group built on twenty years of organic growth, the initial question was one of criteria — what complementarity, what level of overlap is acceptable, which geography comes first — which the published Elevate plan put in order: North American acceleration first, the integrated value chain second. The sector's buying channel pointed to the ideal target: marketing leaders at large groups buy on proof — published references, accredited cloud specialisations — and partner ecosystems, led by Google Cloud and Databricks, concentrate the trade's deal flow.

Sourcing and assessing targets

The US customer analytics landscape counts dozens of boutiques born alongside data platforms — and standard classifications lump them all together, from media agencies to technical integrators. The real filters are those of the trade: genuine ownership of the models — here a standard predictive suite covering propensity, churn and customer lifetime value; verifiable cloud specialisations, which amount to a competence audit by the platforms themselves; the quality of enterprise references; the seniority of teams in a market at war for talent — and, the decisive criterion for a first acquisition, no overlap between client bases, which makes an integration an addition rather than a trade-off.

Off-market channel

Off-market sourcing

Collaboration Capital's technological edge lies in how it identifies targets: semantic clustering and machine learning algorithms rather than sector and administrative classifications. Official activity codes put companies into boxes that cannot answer a buyer's overall objective — they ignore the actual business, the distribution model, the client mix and the business model. Semantic analysis reads what companies really do and maps those that match the acquisition thesis in every dimension, including — above all — those that are not for sale. In the market for this deal, that is what singles out, from the undifferentiated mass of digital consultancies, the analytics firm whose models, cloud accreditations and clients make it a genuine building block of the value chain.

On-market channel

On-market sourcing

The same infrastructure applies to the visible market: the technology extracts the acquisitions and disposals completed in the client's target sector — and, above all, identifies the dealmakers who led them: lawyers, auditors, lending banks and investment funds, assessing how specialised each one is in the sector concerned.

Collaboration Capital thus identifies the dealmakers who are genuinely active in the sector sought, finds their business contact details — emails and phone numbers — and gets in touch to present the client's acquisition project. This is how the on-market channel is fed: it gives the client access to businesses for sale as they come to market, through the people bringing them to market — a particularly active channel in US data consulting, where founders of the CDP generation are reaching decision time.

Together, these two channels raise the game in deal sourcing: Collaboration Capital's technology infrastructure becomes a genuine game changer for acquisition projects. It is designed for ambitious companies that want to build their external growth on this high-end infrastructure.

III

Direct approach and introductions

Approaching a US founder-CEO on behalf of a first-time French acquirer means making up for the lack of an M&A track record with the quality of the project: a published plan — Elevate — that gives the target a structural rather than incidental role; credible continuity guarantees — the entire team retained, operational independence maintained throughout 2026, leadership in place; and cultural alignment treated as a central condition between two firms of founder-experts. The two CEOs' statements describe a jointly built project; with the target addressing its own clients to explain it, trust was the best-prepared asset of the deal.

Negotiation through to closing

Structuring the acquisition of a data consultancy concentrates due diligence on intangibles: the intellectual property of the models and their dependence on platforms; the transferability of cloud partnerships and accreditations on a change of control; the recurrence of contracts and the health of the client base; and team retention — in consulting, value walks out of the door if integration is abrupt. The structure adopted reflected this: a published one-year transition of operational independence, the target's leadership at the helm, and integration of capabilities into the group's platform as the horizon — a consulting group's first acquisition, structured so that the human capital crosses the Atlantic intact, in service of the 2028 ambition.

The deal at a glance

Acquirer: Ekimetrics — Paris · 5 offices (Paris, London, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong) · founded in 2006 · 50% of revenue generated outside France
Target: Actable — New York & Portland (United States)
Target's business: AI-powered customer analytics — propensity, churn and customer lifetime value models
Specialisations: Google Cloud Marketing Analytics · Databricks
Published terms: The group's first acquisition (Elevate plan) · entire team retained · operational independence throughout 2026
Year: 2026 (announced on 2 February)
Our role: Buy-side advisory

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Sommaire

The acquirer: Ekimetrics
The seller: Actable
Media coverage
The rationale and the target
The macroeconomic view
Our advisory value

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