29 May 2026
May 2026 saw a notable shift in deal flow, ANZ companies turned outward as buyers, while overseas strategics continued to pick off specialist Australian and New Zealand software businesses.
Defence communications, energy retail SaaS, education compliance, payments infrastructure and AI services were all in play, with mid-market disclosed values clustering between A$20m and A$35m and several larger transactions left undisclosed. The pattern is now familiar: vertical specialisation is winning over scale, and cross-border tape is running in both directions.
Announced: 22 May 2026, Value: ~A$21m upfront and contingent, plus tiered royalties over five years
ASX-listed defence and communications group Codan announced its second strategic acquisition of the year, with subsidiary DTC agreeing to buy US-based Adaptive Dynamics. The Maryland-headquartered target specialises in anti-jamming, interference mitigation and assured positioning, navigation and timing technology for mission-critical environments.
Adaptive Dynamics brings over two decades of RF and signal processing IP into DTC’s tactical communications stack, with applications across land, maritime and airborne platforms. The deal is expected to close in early 2027 subject to regulatory approvals.
For Codan, this is a clear bolt-on play. Australian defence primes and second-tier suppliers are under pressure to deepen sovereign capability and integrate electronic warfare resilience, owning the underlying algorithmic IP rather than licensing it is fast becoming a competitive necessity.
Completed: 15 May 2026, Value: NZ$24m enterprise value, plus up to NZ$10m earn-out
New Zealand-listed Gentrack completed the acquisition of Prospero Energy, trading as Factor, a SaaS platform that uses machine learning to price and manage commercial and industrial electricity contracts at scale. Factor has customers in Australia and the United Kingdom, with partnerships across Salesforce and AWS. The earn-out is linked to lifting Factor's ARR to circa NZ$17m over the first three years post-close.
The strategic logic is built around Gentrack's g2 platform. Factor's pricing and forecasting engine will be embedded inside g2, allowing Gentrack to immediately roll the capability out to its installed base, which already includes some of the world's largest and most advanced C&I energy retailers, while continuing to sell Factor standalone. Gentrack is positioning the combination as a gold-standard pricing and forecasting offering and expects it to drive revenue growth across its existing customer base and to make g2 more compelling to new prospects globally.
For Factor, the deal solves the classic vertical SaaS scaling problem, gaining the customer relationships, resources and distribution reach to roll the product out to far more energy retailers, far faster than would have been possible standalone. It is a textbook tuck-in: a specialist product with sticky workflows and a strong founder team, plugged into a parent with global utility distribution and a clear path to accelerate the energy transition agenda both companies share.
Announced: 14 May 2026, Value: Undisclosed
National Australia Bank acquired London-founded payments fintech Banked, which operates a pay-by-bank platform that bypasses card networks to deliver real-time, lower-cost account-to-account payments. Banked was backed by Bank of America, Insight Partners and Citi, and had raised more than US$50m prior to exit. NAB was already a customer and an investor via its venture arm.
The acquired entities, with offices in London, Palo Alto and Vilnius, will operate as wholly owned NAB subsidiaries while integration into the bank’s broader technology environment unfolds over coming months.
The strategic message is straightforward: a major Australian bank is buying its way into the account-to-account payments stack rather than building it.
Announced: 6 May 2026, Value: Undisclosed (majority stake)
Australian IT distributor Bluechip Infotech entered the final stage of acquiring a majority stake in fellow retail technology distributor Goodson Imports. Founded in 1950, Goodson supplies point-of-sale, data capture, mobility and kiosk/OEM technology into the Australian retail channel.
Goodson will be rebranded to “Goodson – A Bluechip Company” and retain its existing leadership and operations. It gains access to Bluechip’s broader portfolio, including networking, video surveillance, IoT and edge, access control and power and energy management products.
The deal continues a steady consolidation of the local distribution layer. As vendor portfolios converge across retail, IoT and edge, scale and breadth across categories matters more than ever for distributors trying to remain relevant to reseller and MSP partners.
Announced: 30 April 2026, Value: Undisclosed
US-listed Nelnet (NYSE: NNI) acquired Australia-based Invision Digital, the owner of school visitor and compliance management platforms Passtab, Resitab and Entrytab. Passtab is used by thousands of schools across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom for visitor sign-in, contractor and volunteer compliance, emergency management and first-aid reporting.
The business will sit inside Nelnet’s International unit, broadening the group’s global education technology footprint. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close later in 2026 subject to regulatory approvals.
Another example of an offshore strategic picking up a niche ANZ vertical SaaS asset with international customer reach. Education compliance remains a quietly attractive corner of the market with high renewal, regulator-driven demand, and increasingly multi-country deployments.
