IT services firm Coforge on Friday said it will acquire Silicon Valley-based AI company Encora in an all-stock deal worth $2.35 billion (approximately Rs. 21,133 crore). This is one of the largest overseas acquisitions by a mid-sized Indian IT company, PTI reported.The acquisition will be fully financed with equity, with Coforge issuing approximately $1.89 billion worth of preferred stock to Ancora's existing shareholders, including private equity firms Advent International and Warburg Pincus. Upon completion, the sellers will collectively hold approximately 20% of Corforge's expanded share capital, PTI said in a regulatory filing.“Coforge has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100 percent of Ancora's shares from Advent International, Warburg Pincus and other minority shareholders. The enterprise value of this transaction is $2.35 billion,” the company said.Coforge CEO and Executive Director Sudhir Singh said the acquisition strengthens the company's AI-driven engineering capabilities. “This acquisition establishes a large moat of AI-driven engineering capabilities at Coforge, with the ability to help create an enterprise data core and a cloud foundation dedicated to AI,” said Singh.Encora, an AI-native software engineering services company, is expected to report approximately $600 million in revenue in FY26, with adjusted EBITDA margins of nearly 19%.After the acquisition, Koforzi said the combined company will form a $2.5 billion technology services platform with AI-driven engineering, data and cloud services expected to generate nearly $2 billion in revenue by FY27.“The AI-driven product engineering business is likely to be a $1.25 billion-plus business, the cloud services business is likely to be a $500 million-plus business, and the data engineering business is likely to be a $250 million-plus business,” the company said, adding that it expects the tech and healthcare segments to each grow to more than $170 million in annual revenue immediately after the transaction.The transaction also includes up to $550 million in bridge loans or qualified institutional financing to repay Encora's existing debt, according to the filing.The deal has been agreed at a share price of Rs 1,815 per share, which represents a premium of about 8.5 per cent to Coforge's closing price on Friday.
