31 July 2026
July was less about industries consolidating and more about ownership changing hands. Financial sponsors and corporates dominated the sell side: a private equity owner banked at least a three-fold return on a Melbourne software business, a Japanese multinational exited its Australian data centre estate, and two ASX-listed groups sold non-core divisions. On the buy side, offshore private equity kept setting the clearing price for quality ANZ software, while ANZ acquirers went shopping offshore for AI capability.
Announced: 6 July 2026 | Value: ~A$475m (reported; not disclosed by the parties)
Swedish-headquartered private capital group EQT Group has agreed to acquire Orikan, the Melbourne-based parking, enforcement and compliance technology business, from Five V Capital. Terms were not disclosed, though the Australian Financial Review reported a price of approximately A$475 million, representing at least a three-fold return for Five V. The deal is being executed through the BPEA EQT Mid-Market Growth Partnership, the firm's first dedicated Asia mid-market fund, which closed in May 2024 at US$1.6 billion.
Orikan operates an end-to-end platform spanning software, hardware, payments and data services, selling to councils, transport authorities, universities, hospitals, airports and stadium operators across Australia, New Zealand and North America. Chief executive Peter Neale continues to lead the business, with EQT backing further investment in product, data and AI capability alongside accelerated North American growth.
This is the largest disclosed ANZ software transaction of the month. It also fits a pattern: EQT's Asia mid-market strategy has recently taken a majority position in PropertyMe and launched a tender offer for Japan's Mamezo. Australian vertical software with institutional customers and a credible offshore growth story continues to attract global sponsors at full prices.
Announced: 20 July 2026 | Value: Undisclosed (reported at just under A$200m)
Fujitsu has agreed to sell its Australian data centre business to local private equity firm Next Capital Private Equity, funded through Next's A$375 million fifth fund. The transaction covers five operational facilities at Homebush and Greystanes in New South Wales, Noble Park in Victoria, Eight Mile Plains in Queensland and Malaga in Western Australia. Fujitsu's North Ryde site and the underlying land are excluded. Completion is expected later this year.
The portfolio carries roughly 25MW of capacity, of which about 7MW is currently leased, with headroom to expand toward 100MW. On completion the assets become an independent, Australian-managed national platform with a dedicated management team, while the existing team transfers with the business. Fujitsu framed the sale as a way to redirect capital toward sovereign AI, high-performance and quantum computing, and cyber resilience. For Next Capital it is a return to the sector, having previously owned Brisbane-based iseek.
The reported price sits close to replacement value and well below the A$500 million to A$1 billion these assets were expected to fetch when first shopped in 2024, a reminder that legacy enterprise colocation and AI-ready capacity are now valued very differently. And Australian ownership was explicitly acknowledged as helpful given the customer base, which says something about how sovereignty is being priced into infrastructure deals.
Announced: 21 July 2026 | Value: US$10m upfront, plus earn-outs of up to US$14.31m
ASX-listed WiseTech Global has entered a binding agreement to acquire FRDM.ai, a California-founded developer of AI-powered supply chain risk and compliance intelligence. Upfront consideration is US$10 million in cash and WiseTech shares, with all-cash earn-outs capped at US$14.31 million. Completion is expected on 3 August 2026.
Founded in 2018 by Justin Dillon, FRDM.ai maps supplier networks well beyond direct suppliers and scores risk in real time across modern slavery, forced labour, sanctions, denied parties, cyber and geopolitical exposure. The technology becomes the engine behind VerifyWise, a new WiseTech product line that plugs into its existing BorderWise, Denied Party Screening and Global Knowledge assets, with distribution across a network of more than 22,000 logistics providers.
The headline number is immaterial for a company of WiseTech's size, which is rather the point. This is capability buying: a small, well-targeted acquisition that turns an existing compliance data estate into a monitoring product. Chief Innovation Officer Richard White had worked with the founder for some nine months before signing, a reminder that the best cross-border tuck-ins tend to be relationships before they are processes.
Announced: 20 July 2026 | Value: Undisclosed
Auckland-headquartered brand tracking platform Tracksuit has acquired Hall, a Sydney startup that measures how brands are described, recommended or omitted by AI assistants. Hall's full four-person team joins Tracksuit, with founder Kai Forsyth becoming principal product manager leading AI visibility. Terms were not disclosed.
Founded in 2021 and led by chief executive Connor Archbold, Tracksuit sells a subscription dashboard tracking brand awareness and purchase intent across nearly 20,000 brands in 25 markets, with customers including Unilever and Pfizer. Hall, founded in 2023, sits in the emerging answer-engine optimisation category alongside players such as Profound and Bluefish. Tracksuit expects to roll AI visibility features out to customers through the remainder of 2026.
Small, but strategically clean. Tracksuit is fusing human survey data with machine-visibility data to defend the category it built and doing it by acquisition rather than a build. It is also a neat trans-Tasman data point: a New Zealand scale-up buying Australian AI capability while expanding into the United States, with no capital raise attached.
Announced: 25 and 29 June 2026 | Value: A$30m (onPlatinum); Undisclosed (Crowd IT)
Advent Partners-backed efex closed out June with two acquisitions inside seven days. The larger is onPlatinum ICT, the managed services division of ASX-listed Comms Group, for A$30 million: A$28.5 million cash upfront with A$1.5 million held in escrow for twelve months. It is efex's largest deal to date. Comms Group had itself acquired onPlatinum in 2022 for up to A$18 million and is divesting to concentrate on cloud and unified communications, domestic telecoms and global services.
Founded in 2012 by Shannon Overs, onPlatinum serves mid-market and multi-site customers across Queensland and the eastern seaboard, bringing more than 7,000 endpoints. The second deal, Crowd IT, is a Melbourne MSP founded in 2020 by Chris Germon, now efex head of healthcare, specialising in healthcare and radiology environments where clinical uptime is non-negotiable. Together the deals take efex to around 370 staff.
efex is now among the most disciplined buy-and-build operators in the local market, with roughly a dozen deals behind it, and healthcare has clearly become a deliberate vertical rather than an accident of deal flow. The onPlatinum transaction is the more instructive half: listed ANZ technology companies are increasingly willing to sell profitable services divisions to sponsor-backed platforms that will pay for scale they cannot themselves justify.
Announced: 8 July 2026 | Value: Undisclosed
Brisbane-based community and stakeholder engagement platform Open Point has acquired Converlens , an AI-powered analytics business built around public consultation workflows. The two had already integrated their platforms under a long-standing partnership, and the acquisition formalises that arrangement under single ownership. Terms were not disclosed.
Open Point serves more than 750 organisations, including local governments, utilities and transport and energy providers, with customers spanning Australia and North America. Converlens, co-founded by Clint Walker, analyses large volumes of qualitative feedback: consultation responses, submissions, transcripts and stakeholder correspondence. The combined platform covers capture, management and analysis across a project's full engagement lifecycle.
Government engagement software is an unglamorous but resilient corner of vertical SaaS, with regulator-driven demand, high switching costs and a manual-process problem that AI is genuinely well suited to.
Announced: 20 July 2026 | Value: A$7m
ASX-listed HiTech Group Australia has signed a binding agreement to acquire selected business assets of Hudson Global Resources' Australian operations from administrators for A$7 million, comprising an upfront cash payment and a conditional deferred amount linked to performance. HiTech had submitted its proposal on 23 June, initially framed as a non-binding A$15 million offer subject to diligence, ACCC approval and financing.
Hudson is a 40-year-old recruitment and workforce solutions business with an established track record in professional and ICT recruitment, business support and project services across government and private sectors. For HiTech, the deal converts a regionally focused ICT recruitment and consulting business into a nationally scaled workforce solutions platform.
The structure is the story. By acquiring assets from administrators rather than the company as a going concern, HiTech has ringfenced legacy liabilities while keeping the customer relationships and delivery capability. Distressed and special-situations processes remain one of the few places in this market where a listed small cap can buy scale at a sensible multiple, provided it can move quickly and carry the execution risk.
Financial sponsors are setting the price for ANZ software
Orikan is the clearest signal of the month: a global sponsor paying a reported A$475 million for a Melbourne vertical software business, and an Australian sponsor banking at least three times its money. Private equity is now on both sides of the table in the local mid-market, which tends to narrow the gap between founder expectations and achievable outcomes. For owners of software businesses with recurring revenue, institutional customers and an offshore growth story, the buyer pool has rarely been deeper.
Corporate pruning is generating the deal flow
Fujitsu exiting data centres and Comms Group exiting managed services meant July's supply came disproportionately from corporates narrowing their focus rather than founders deciding to sell. Carve-outs are harder to execute than clean company sales, needing transitional services, contract novations and a management team willing to stand alone. They are also often where the value sits, because the seller is optimising for focus rather than price.
ANZ acquirers are buying AI capability, not building it
WiseTech and Tracksuit both chose to acquire rather than build, and both bought small, focused teams whose technology plugs directly into an existing data estate and distribution network. Neither deal was large. Both were strategically decisive. Expect more of this shape: modest acquisitions of AI-native tooling by ANZ platforms that already own the customer relationship and the data, where the deal compresses a two-year roadmap into a quarter.
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