How much did OpenAI pay for Tomoro?

OpenAI acquired Tomoro, an AI consulting firm, for an undisclosed amount. The deal adds Tomoro's expertise in deploying enterprise AI solutions to OpenAI's growing services business. The acquisition signals OpenAI's push beyond model development into direct consulting and implementation services for corporate clients.

Hi operators. We’ve started expanding AIEI to include datapoints which we think will be helpful in growing your consulting, training and FDE companies. Starting this week, we’re tracking investments and M&A activity in the sector a lot of this info flies below the radar because it’s often not being done by VCs . Where possible we’ll try to unlock valuations and deal structures too. We’ve also spun up a section to monitor developments in the partner programs being run by frontier models and major applications. And our longer operator essay is still there at the bottom of the note. Feedback welcome, just hit reply to this mail and let us know other areas of coverage you’d like to see included. -Daria 💰 Market Monitor AI services M&A + Investment We now track a huge 800+ number of companies in the AI enablement space so we thought it would be useful to have a a Market Monitor section which highlighted some of the more interesting investments and M&A deals. We’ll evolve it based on feedback so let us know what else you’d like to see covered. Notable M&A US, AI implementation WinWire has been acquired by NTT DATA. The Santa Clara-based Microsoft partner specialises in agentic AI, AI on Azure, data engineering and cloud-native development, with over 1,000 Azure engineers. Link https://us.nttdata.com/en/news/press-release/2026/may/ntt-data-announces-intent-to-acquire-winwire US, AI implementation MCA Connect has been acquired by Grant Thornton Advisors. The Denver-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure consulting firm of ~350 employees specialises in manufacturing and distribution sector AI transformation. Link https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260520050890/en/Grant-Thornton-Advisors-to-expand-AI--and-technology-led-services-by-acquiring-MCA-Connect %20Radical%20Data%20Science EU, AI consulting OMMAX + Singulier have merged to form a 400-person pan-European AI consulting platform. The combined group is targeting €80-100M revenue and aims to triple in size within five years, backed by Eurazeo and Founders Future. Link https://www.consultancy.eu/news/13709/digital-strategy-consultancies-ommax-and-singulier-form-400-person-group SE, AI implementation POLE Consulting has been acquired by Nextview Consulting. The Stockholm-based boutique Salesforce and Agentforce specialist joins Nextview's pan-European platform as it builds Nordic AI-first delivery capacity. Link https://www.consultancy.eu/news/13731/nextview-consulting-buys-swedish-salesforce-specialist-pole-consulting DK, AI implementation Adeno has been acquired by Plat4mation, backed by Keensight Capital. The Copenhagen-based ServiceNow specialist of ~50 consultants expands Plat4mation's Nordic footprint. Link https://www.consultancy.eu/news/13779/plat4mation-grows-nordic-presence-with-acquisition-of-adeno NL/global, AI implementation OFI Services has been acquired by Artefact, the Cinven-backed data and AI consulting firm valued at over €1B, expanding its process intelligence and hyperautomation practice. Link https://www.artefact.com/news/artefact-acquires-ofi-services-to-expand-its-leadership-in-process-intelligence-hyperautomation-and-agentic-transformation/ SI, AI implementation In516ht has been acquired by Blend360. The Ljubljana-based Snowflake Elite Partner and data engineering consultancy of 90 professionals, named 2025 EMEA Data Cloud Service Growth Partner of the Year, joins Blend360's global AI services operation. Link https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blend-acquires-in516ht-a-snowflake-elite-partner-expanding-enterprise-ai-capabilities-globally-302788630.html US, AI implementation TAO Digital Solutions has been acquired by Cyient for $218M. The Santa Clara-based firm provides data engineering, AI and product engineering services with 3,500 employees and $80M in 2025 revenue. Link https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cyient-enters-agreement-to-acquire-tao-digital-302786318.html Notable Investments PT, AI implementation Augusta Labs has raised a seed round at ~€56.5M valuation, backed by founders of Portuguese unicorns including Sword Health, Anchorage Digital, OutSystems and Feedzai. The Lisbon-based applied AI laboratory builds customised AI solutions for Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms and government agencies. Link https://app.dealroom.co/news/note/augusta-labs-raises-seed-round-at-50m-valuation Have we missed an interesting deal? Or do you want to correct details? Just hit reply to let us know. 🙌 Partner Program Updates models + platforms As both the frontier models and major applications continue to scale, they’re getting increasingly serious about their partner programs and general developer ecosystem thinking. Here are some recent developments to keep track of. Anthropic: Very busy. Launched the Services Track for the Claude Partner Network on 3 June, creating three tiers alongside a new Partner Hub portal where enterprises can search and vet implementation firms. The broader network now has 40,000+ applicants and 10,000+ certified consultants. Link https://www.anthropic.com/news/services-track-partner-hub Also: KPMG signed a global alliance on 19 May embedding Claude into its Digital Gateway client delivery platform across 276,000 employees, with Anthropic naming KPMG a preferred partner for private equity work. Link https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-kpmg And: PwC expanded its Anthropic alliance on 14 May, rolling out Claude Code and Cowork to US teams, committing to train and certify 30,000 PwC professionals on Claude. Link https://www.anthropic.com/news/pwc-expanded-partnership Microsoft: Launched Agent 365 on 29 May with a named list of Strategic Partners for implementation, including Accenture, PwC, EY, Capgemini, NTT Data, Cognizant, TCS, Slalom, and Avanade among 22 firms. Link https://www.consultancy.uk/news/amp/44297/microsoft-names-select-group-of-consultancies-as-strategic-partners-for-agent-365 Google : Two significant moves. On 4 June, IBM and Google Cloud launched a new Google Cloud Practice combining IBM Consulting Advantage with Gemini Enterprise, staffed by thousands of certified IBM consultants and forward-deployed engineers — described as a multi-billion-dollar services opportunity. Link https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-06-04-ibm-and-google-cloud-announce-strategic-partnership-to-scale-ai-with-human-expertise-and-ai-powered-delivery Also: On 28 May, EQT and Google Cloud announced a partnership to bring Gemini Enterprise AI to 300+ EQT portfolio companies globally, with access to Google's full consulting partner ecosystem including Accenture, Capgemini, KPMG, McKinsey, PwC and TCS. Link https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eqt-and-google-accelerate-ai-adoption-for-global-businesses-302784450.html Grant Thornton: Rolled out Anthropic Claude internally under the GT Augment brand - notable as a signal of mid-market professional services firms formalising AI vendor relationships at the delivery layer rather than just using tools ad hoc. Link https://www.anthropic.com/news/services-track-partner-hub Did we miss a partner program update from any of the major players which you feel is important? The operator essay: What OpenAI Paid for Tomoro and what it implies for your AI services company When OpenAI's deployment vehicle announced it had acquired Tomoro, a Scottish AI consultancy that had barely existed for three years, the reaction in the industry was a mix of awe and confusion. No price was disclosed. No multiples were given. Just a headline, a founder quote, and a lot of people doing mental math. However, buried inside a routine Companies House filing submitted just days after the deal closed, is enough data to reconstruct what was almost certainly one of the best-performing young businesses in UK tech.We did the math and think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what this deal looked like. What we found is one of the more remarkable financial stories to emerge from the AI services boom. Not because the number is astronomical, but because of how the business got there. Tomoro never raised a penny of outside capital. The filing that tells you everything almost Small UK companies are exempt from publishing their detailed P&L in statutory filings. Most founders know this and use it. What they can't hide though is the balance sheet, and for anyone who knows how to read one, the balance sheet is often enough. Tomoro's accounts for the year ending 31 March 2026 were filed on 19 May 2026, days after the acquisition was announced. They show a business that generated roughly £8.2 million in profits after tax in a single year. We know this because retained earnings the cumulative profit a company keeps rather than distributes jumped by exactly that amount, with no new shares issued and no external money coming in. The corporation tax creditor sitting on the balance sheet lets you gross that figure back up to pre-tax profit of around £10 million. The company had 89 employees on average during that year. It held £5 million in cash and no debt. To put that margin in context: Accenture runs at around 15% EBITDA, and the market has spent four years marking it down for it - the stock is off 57% from its peak. Tomoro, a two-year-old AI consulting firm in Edinburgh, appears to have been running at roughly 40%. Backing this into a revenue number The accounts don't include a revenue line. That's the whole point of the small-company exemption. So we triangulated from five different directions. The most straightforward is the cost build-up. You take the implied profit, add back estimated staff costs the wage bill isn't filed either, but Glassdoor gives you a reasonable proxy , layer in a sensible estimate for rent, software, and overhead, and you arrive at a revenue figure that would make those economics work. Every method we tried - margin inversion, revenue per employee, debtor days analysis, press reports of 10x monthly revenue growth - landed in roughly the same place: somewhere between £22m and £26m for the UK entity alone, with Singapore and Australia operations likely adding to that. So we think ~£24m is about right. The day-rate question This is where it gets interesting for anyone who runs, or is thinking of building, an AI services business. LinkedIn shows Tomoro had around 95 engineers at the time of the acquisition, about 58% of total headcount, growing at 164% year-on-year. Glassdoor data, based on eleven salary submissions rated "very high confidence," puts average base pay for their technical staff at around £97,000, with additional compensation on top. If you back-calculate the average billable engineer headcount during FY26 the year just filed , you get to roughly 52 people. At 80% utilisation across a standard working year a reasonable assumption for a demand-constrained consultancy those engineers generate about 184 billable days each. The broad market median for AI contractors sits around £550-600 per day. At that rate, 52 engineers produce maybe £15 million. To hit £24 million, Tomoro needs to be billing at closer to £2,500 per day - the territory of top-tier strategy consultancies, not the general AI contractor market. So either Tomoro was genuinely commanding a premium plausible, given its positioning as a specialist OpenAI deployment partner at a time when that expertise was scarce or that some revenue wasn't pure time-and-materials: retainers, outcome-based fees, or productised offerings that don't follow a simple day-rate model. Either explanation is interesting. Both suggest a business that had figured out something about pricing that most AI services firms haven't. What OpenAI was actually buying The historical accounts almost certainly don't reflect what drove the price. Engineering headcount grew 164% in the twelve months to the acquisition. That kind of trajectory means the run-rate revenue at the moment of sale was likely materially higher than anything in the filed accounts. At 95 engineers and mid-market day rates, you're already looking at an annualised revenue figure 40-70% above FY26. The business OpenAI acquired was not the business described in the filing. It was something considerably larger, and still accelerating. Perhaps most importantly Tomoro has enough credibility despite its short operating history to prove that they 1 can scale delivery quickly and profitably and 2 know how to hire, develop and retain scarce FDE talent. The 40% margin is also worth sitting with. That's not an accident. It's the result of being supply-constrained rather than demand-constrained — a situation where you have more work than engineers, which means you can charge for scarcity. Most consultancies are in the opposite position. They're selling hard and discounting to fill their bench. The AI skills shortage, at least for the moment, has inverted that dynamic for firms positioned correctly. Applying the multiples we've heard from sources close to OpenAI and Anthropic's M&A teams - a ceiling of around 10-12x EBITDA or 3x revenue for consulting acquisitions - we arrive at a deal value somewhere in the range of £90-150 million. The earnout provisions almost certainly do meaningful work at the top of that range, tying the final number to revenue and retention targets post-close. The question for anyone building in this space is whether that window stays open. As more engineers develop AI deployment skills, the premium Tomoro commanded will compress. Which is presumably part of why, if you're a Tomoro founder, you take the call from OpenAI in early 2026 rather than waiting to see how the market evolves.