Avalara Acquires Versori for Agentic AI
Tax compliance software firm Avalara has acquired Versori, a platform that uses agentic AI to automate the development of API connectors. The move signals a major push toward AI-native, self-serve integration for enterprise customers, treating connectors as composable assets built by AI agents.
The financial terms of the Avalara-Versori acquisition were not disclosed. The deal includes Versori's technology platform and its entire 23-person team, with co-founders Sean Brown and Daniel Jones joining Avalara to continue developing the integration and AI capabilities. Manchester-based Versori, a Y Combinator graduate, had previously raised $10.5 million. Versori's platform moves beyond traditional, static connector libraries by using AI agents to dynamically generate custom API integrations on-demand. This "agentic AI" approach is designed to automate the entire five-step process of connector development: authentication, endpoint discovery, schema extraction, testing, and deployment, reducing development time from weeks to hours. The system is built on a cloud-native foundation and can interpret requirements from natural language prompts or even diagrams to build an integration plan. For a platform team, this signals a shift from maintaining a vast library of pre-built connectors to managing an AI-driven factory that builds them. The core technology leverages a Modular Connector Protocol (MCP) for standardized architecture and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to provide contextual knowledge for AI decision-making. This strategy aims to tackle API sprawl and the complexity of managing multiple API gateways by automating the creation and maintenance of connections to thousands of enterprise systems like ERPs and ecommerce platforms. The acquisition accelerates Avalara's long-term strategy of delivering "always-on," real-time, audit-ready compliance embedded directly into transaction workflows. By automating the creation of data integrations, Avalara can more rapidly connect to the diverse commerce systems used by its 200,000+ customers across 75 countries, a critical factor in the complex and fragmented world of global tax compliance. Versori will continue to operate as a sub-brand, "Versori, by Avalara," indicating a plan to maintain its identity while embedding the technology across Avalara's platform.
