HR tech acquisitions 2024 to September 2026: who bought whom and what it means for customers

What our directory shows: which HR tools already belong to a parent company

Our directory records a parent company for every tool where one exists, with a source for that field. In HR, 59 of the 329 tools belong to a larger group. Some of these are products the group built itself, such as SAP SuccessFactors or Microsoft Power Automate. The rest are brands that were bought and kept running under their own name, which our data marks as acquired but still active.

The share differs a lot by category. Engagement and survey tools have the highest share of the categories in the chart below, with 35 percent owned by a group, from Workday Peakon Employee Voice to Viva Glint and Qualtrics EmployeeXM. Applicant tracking follows at 22 percent. At the other end, 0 of the 9 EOR platforms in our directory have a parent. Deel and Remote appear in this article as buyers, not as targets.

Owned tools also look different on paper. Of the HR tools with a parent, 69 percent quote prices only on request, against 69 percent across all HR tools. They serve large companies more often (92 percent against 65 percent) and offer EU hosting more often (39 percent against 27 percent). The explorer below lets you filter the HR tools by ownership, vendor region and category and compare what each group publishes about hosting, prices, the data processing agreement and subprocessors.

One limit applies. The parent field describes ownership today, not when a deal happened, and it cannot show deals that folded a product into the buyer's suite without a separate brand. HiredScore, which Workday bought in 2024, is an example: it is now part of Workday's recruiting suite and has no own entry with us. How we collect and check these fields is described on our methodology page.

Sources: [1][2][3]

HR tech acquisitions 2024 to 2026: the suites bought AI

The largest buyers were the HR suites, and most of what they bought was AI. Workday announced its intent to acquire HiredScore, an AI tool for sourcing and ranking candidates, on February 26, 2024. On August 21, 2025, it signed an agreement for Paradox, whose conversational agent handles high-volume frontline hiring, and closed the deal on October 1, 2025. Workday's quarterly report puts the purchase consideration at $1.1 billion, of which $1.0 billion was cash.

Workday kept going. It bought Flowise, an open-source builder for AI agents, on August 14, 2025, announced the purchase of Sana for about $1.1 billion on September 16, 2025, and completed it on November 4, 2025. On November 19, 2025, it signed for Pipedream, whose connectors are to feed its agent platform. Paradox is now sold as the Workday Paradox Candidate Experience Agent, to new and existing customers, through Workday or Paradox.

SAP announced on August 1, 2025, that it would buy SmartRecruiters and completed the deal on September 11, 2025, without disclosing the price. SAP said SmartRecruiters would stay available standalone for the foreseeable future and that customers could keep using it with SAP or other HR suites. The same deal changed the roadmap for SAP's own customers: according to CIO.com, users of SuccessFactors Recruiting get three to five years to move to SmartRecruiters. Our comparison of Greenhouse and SmartRecruiters covers the product itself.

Payroll and workforce management consolidated too. ADP acquired WorkForce Software on October 15, 2024, for about $1.2 billion in cash. Paychex agreed to buy Paycor on January 7, 2025, and closed on April 14, 2025, at $22.50 per share, about $4.1 billion in enterprise value. Zoom bought the interview intelligence tool BrightHire for $98.0 million in cash and closed on December 1, 2025.

Sources: [2][4][3][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]

Private equity: Dayforce, Orgvue and the owners behind the logos

The biggest single deal in the period came from a financial investor. Thoma Bravo agreed on August 21, 2025, to take Dayforce private at $70.00 per share in cash, about $12.3 billion in enterprise value, and completed the deal on February 4, 2026. Dayforce said it would keep operating under its own name and brand, with its chief executive staying on.

Smaller buyouts followed the same pattern. Main Capital Partners announced a majority stake in the London workforce planning vendor Orgvue on September 8, 2026, with management staying and add-on acquisitions planned. For customers, a private equity owner changes less on day one than a strategic buyer, because the product is not folded into another suite. It can change more later, when the owner merges add-ons, raises prices or sells again.

Several ownership changes that look recent are older. Sumeru Equity Partners became the majority owner of the Swiss compensation vendor beqom in 2022, and Clearlake Capital took Cornerstone OnDemand private in 2021. Our directory had no parent for Cornerstone; we have corrected that. For a side-by-side view of Dayforce and a competitor under different owners, see Dayforce vs UKG.

Sources: [25][21][24][26]

Specialists and platforms buy features, not customers

Below the suites, vendors bought small companies to add a feature. Phenom bought EDGE in February 2025, Be Applied in February 2026 and Plum in April 2026, each time to embed assessments or planning in its own platform. Docebo bought 365Talents on January 20, 2026, and kept its brand while integrating it step by step. Payscale bought Datapeople on September 16, 2025, and Amadeus Fire bought the Berlin learning platform masterplan on September 24, 2025, for an enterprise value of about 20 million euros.

The EOR and all-in-one platforms were active buyers. Deel bought Zavvy in February 2024, Hofy in July 2024, Safeguard Global's payroll division in March 2025 and the identity verification tool Clarity in August 2026. Remote bought Easop in April 2024, Atlas in January 2026 and Bravas in April 2026. Our article on AI features of EOR providers shows what these platforms offer today.

Mid-market HR suites did the same. HiBob bought the planning tool Mosaic in February 2025, Culture Amp bought the analytics start-up Orgnostic in March 2024, Lattice bought Pando in August 2026, Personio bought the Munich recruiting AI start-up aurio in April 2026, and Factorial bought Empion on September 2, 2026. Paylocity completed the purchase of the spend management tool Airbase on October 1, 2024, for about $325 million in cash.

For customers of the small target, these deals matter most. A product with a few hundred customers inside a larger platform either becomes a module or is phased out. Factorial wrote that Empion customers keep their products and contracts unchanged during a gradual integration. Most other announcements say nothing about existing contracts.

Sources: [27][22][28][20][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][23][42]

What an acquisition changes for customers: contract, data and switching

Buyers rarely say much about contracts. Among the statements we checked, LumApps went furthest: it told Beekeeper customers that their contract, pricing, login and support contacts would persist, and that a unified product would roll out in phases over 12 to 18 months. Paycor said its customers would stay on the Paycor platform with their existing service teams. SmartRecruiters wrote that nothing about day-to-day use would change. None of these pages promises prices beyond the current term.

The contract itself usually moves with the vendor. When the buyer purchases the shares, the vendor company and its contracts stay in place. When the buyer takes over assets, contracts have to be transferred. Many vendor terms allow that without asking the customer. HiBob's customer subscription terms, for example, waive consent for an assignment to a successor in a merger, reorganization or sale of substantially all assets.

Data protection gives customers stronger rights than contract law. Under GDPR Article 28(2), a processor may not engage another processor without the controller's authorization, and under a general authorization it must inform the customer of new or replaced subprocessors so the customer can object. An acquisition often brings exactly that: the buyer's hosting, support centers or AI models. At the end of the contract, Article 28(3)(g) obliges the vendor to delete or return all personal data.

Switching got easier in the EU. The Data Act has applied since September 12, 2025, and covers software as a service. Customers can start a switch with at most two months' notice, the provider must complete it within a transition period of 30 calendar days, and from January 12, 2027, providers may no longer charge switching fees, including data egress charges.

Sources: [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]

Your vendor was acquired: what to check now

Start with what the buyer published and what it left out. Save the announcement, the customer FAQ and any statement on brand, support and roadmap, because later contract talks will refer to them. Then ask your account manager for three documents in writing: the current subprocessor list, the planned hosting location including the AI features, and the product roadmap for the next two releases.

Next, look at your own contract. Note the renewal date, the notice period and any clause on price increases. If renewal falls within the next year, that is the moment to negotiate price protection or a shorter term. Check whether the vendor can assign the contract without your consent and whether your data processing agreement gives you a deadline to object to new subprocessors.

Finally, test your exit. Request a full data export in a common format while the old team is still in place, and write down which integrations would break. In an EU contract you can refer to the switching rules of the Data Act. The checklist and the decision guide below turn these steps into a working list. Neither replaces advice from your lawyer or data protection officer.

Sources: [47][48][50][46]