Eilla AI completes Europe’s first M&A deal by an AI-native advisory

The first European M&A deal completed by an AI-native advisory firm marks the beginning of a new era for one of the world’s most complex professional services industries.

Over the past year, the world’s most influential venture capital firms – General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Sequoia, a16z, YC, Blackstone and 19 others have converged on the same thesis: the next wave of category-defining companies will not sell software to professional services firms. They will be the professional services firm.

The capital behind that conviction is already moving at scale. General Catalyst has committed $1.5 billion to acquiring traditional service businesses and rebuilding them with AI. Sequoia and a16z co-led $108 million into Rillet, an AI-native accounting firm. Emergence Capital led a $47 million round into Harper, an AI-native insurance brokerage. Lawhive, an AI-native law firm, raised $60 million on the back of 7x year-on-year revenue growth. Across legal, accounting, insurance and consulting, over a billion dollars has been deployed into companies that own the outcome rather than sell the tool.

Sequoia partner Julien Bek crystallised the thesis in a widely circulated essay earlier this month titled “Services: The New Software.” His core argument: for every dollar spent on software, six dollars are spent on services. AI is turning that six dollars into software. The next trillion-dollar company, he wrote, will be a software company masquerading as a services firm.

This week, the thesis found its first European proof point in what many consider the hardest test case of all: M&A advisory.

Eilla AI AI has executed its first M&A transaction, marking Europe’s first deal executed by an AI-native M&A advisory firm: the acquisition of two Central and Eastern European digital marketing agencies, CreateX and Native Digital, by White Pearl Technology Group, a Swedish listed company.

Nikola Lazarov, CEO and Co-Founder of Eilla AI, said: “Our technology enables us to reach hundreds of high-fit buyers across multiple countries within days, each with messaging built on in-depth research into what makes the acquisition compelling for that specific buyer. We use AI from the very start of the process, building the buyer universe, helping with company positioning, preparing presentation materials, all the way through to due diligence support. That pace and depth would be impossible to replicate without the infrastructure we have built. Our work with CreateX and Native Digital is not just proof of concept. It is a completed deal.”

Eilla AI’s proprietary technology, built in-house over three years, combines AI infrastructure with experienced M&A advisors who oversee the AI-generated work, manage transaction processes and coordinate communication between both sides.

The founders of both acquired companies credited Eilla AI with making the transactions possible. “Honestly, without Eilla, this deal would not have happened,” said Aleksandar, founder and CEO of CreateX. The reaction from Native Digital was similar.

The deal arrives at a moment of acute structural pressure on the European M&A market. The European Commission estimates that a third of EU entrepreneurs will exit their businesses over the coming decade, putting roughly seven million businesses and 30 million jobs at risk. In Germany alone, 626,000 businesses plan ownership transfers by 2027. Traditional boutique advisory firms cannot economically serve the vast majority of these transactions. A proper sell-side process requires hundreds of hours of work, and for deals below a certain size, the fees do not cover the cost of running that process properly. The result is a market where most business owners either cannot access quality advisory or receive a diminished version of it.

Eilla AI’s cost structure is fundamentally different. Because AI handles the volume-intensive work, buyer sourcing, outreach and document creation, the firm operates on a success-fee-only basis with no retainers. The firm has generated over €20 million in fee pipeline, a more than 15-fold increase since the start of the year, and currently has 20 mandated deals.

The pattern has a precedent. In Japan, Shunsaku Sagami built M&A Research Institute to address a similar succession crisis, using AI to compress deal timelines from over 12 months to an average of 6.2 months. The company is now publicly listed, and Sagami, at 33, became Japan’s youngest billionaire. In the United States, OffDeal raised $17 million to build an AI-native investment bank. The race to redefine M&A advisory is now global. Eilla AI is Europe’s entry point.

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