AI startup Hyper Anna acquired as Aussie M&A skyrockets

Aussie AI startup Hyper Anna has been acquired by US-based and NYSE-listed analytics automation company Alteryx.

Founded in 2015 by Natalie Nguyen and Sam Zheng, Hyper Anna is a data science startup that offers business customers a ‘virtual data scientist’, designed to perform automatic data analysis and monitor business performance.

The tech tool takes data analysis outputs and applies AI to glean relevant insights into it for the business.

Back in 2017, Hyper Anna raised $16 million in Series A funding, in a round led by Sequoia China and pegged to fuel a global expansion.

Now Hyper Anna’s customers include the likes of Microsoft, Westpac and Deloitte, as well as local organisations such as NBN and Transport for NSW.

The value of the acquisition has not yet been disclosed, but more details are expected to be announced in Alteryx’s next earnings announcement in early November.

Alteryx is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and currently has a market cap of US$4.47 billion ($6.11 billion).

Hyper Anna chief executive Nguyen is set to take on the role of vice president of product management, and will continue to lead the Hyper Anna product teams within Alteryx.

“By now working together with Alteryx, we can offer capabilities that are far greater than the sum of its parts,” Nguyen said in a statement.

“This is the kind of end-to-end partnership that will help customers take their business to the next level.

“The Alteryx vision aligns so genuinely with what we set out to do at Hyper Anna and I could not be more excited to see where we can go from here.”

According to a statement, the acquisition will allow Alteryx to offer a fully automated ‘end-to-end analytic pipeline’, using various data sources and AI-driven insights.

It will see Alteryx offering more solutions to its own customer base in Australia and beyond.

“Hyper Anna’s mission to enable everyone, regardless of analytical background, to access data insights aligns perfectly with the Alteryx vision to enable every person to transform data into a breakthrough,” Mark Anderson, chief executive officer of Alteryx, said in the statement.

Chief product officer Suresh Vittal added that research commissioned by Alteryx found about 90% of Australian organisations “lack the necessary workforce and process-related analytics capabilities to see meaningful benefits to business performance”.

“There’s a huge need to get faster, automated insights that can be democratised and accessed across an organisation,” he added.

“The combined platforms from Alteryx and Hyper Anna seek to solve this.”

This is just the latest in a string of merger and acquisition deals targeting Australian startups.

In September, we saw Clipchamp acquired by tech giant Microsoft, while sports analysis startup Gameface.AI was acquired by listed sports equipment company Slinger Bags for almost $33 million, and specialist childcare provider Leor was acquired by G8 for $9.5 million.

And in August, Aussie family-run tech company Task was acquired for a whopping $120 million, but the headlines were stolen by Afterpay’s mammoth $39 billion sale to US fintech giant Square.