Sankhya, a Brazilian business management platform (ERP), continues to advance its mergers and acquisitions strategy and may announce a new deal as early as March. The company, which has purchased 10 companies since 2021, has been maturing its service portfolio and has plans to go public in the North American market on its radar, with a possible window in 2028.
According to Felipe Calixto, CEO and co-founder of Sankhya, the goal is to close three acquisitions in 2026, focusing on startups that complement the solutions already offered. One of the negotiations is in the final phase and should be announced next month. The other two remain under analysis, within a strategy of controlled growth throughout the year.
The movement continues the M&As strategy started in 2021, after Sankhya received an investment of R$425 million from GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. The most recent acquisition was Lincros, a logistics management startup from Santa Catarina with artificial intelligence, announced in September 2025.
“For many years, I didn’t know how to buy a company”, admitted Felipe during an event held in Uberlândia, last Saturday (7). According to the executive, acquisitions were not part of the company’s strategy in its first decades, after its founding in 1989.
“We had 30 years of experience growing organically. Every year, the goal was to advance at least 30%, and we played this game very well. Over time, it became increasingly difficult to grow at the same rate. When GIC invested in us, we started thinking about growing through acquisitions. We didn’t know exactly what was good and, to this day, I’m not sure,” he told Startups.
Road to IPO
Sankhya’s M&As also feed the company’s strategy to reach R$1 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a level that would bring the company closer to an IPO. In 2025, the company ended the year with around R$740 million in ARR and, according to Felipe, the expectation is to reach the billion-dollar mark in 2026.
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The IPO has been under discussion since 2024, with initial plans that envisaged a debut from 2025. The executive states that the North American market is on the radar for a possible listing, although he highlights that there is no rush to execute the move.
“We have the desire, but there is no pressure from anyone – not even our investors”, he stated. The CEO sees the IPO in the United States as a “bold move”, given the recent dry period. “We haven’t seen an IPO in Brazil for many years, due to the economic and political moment we are living in. If there is an improvement in this scenario, there is a great possibility of Sankhya carrying out the IPO”, he said.
According to the CEO, 2028 appears as a possible window for the operation, although it is not yet definitive. For now, the company remains focused on gaining maturity to carry out a well-executed IPO.
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Maturation of the thesis
For Felipe, there is no single formula or “absolute truth” when it comes to growth. According to him, Sankhya followed a different path to that adopted by larger competitors. Instead of buying competing companies to gain market share, the company decided to acquire complementary businesses, investing in building an ecosystem with multiple functionalities.
“We have already analyzed around 800 companies to buy just 10. We had to learn a lot, including patience, because it is a long, time-consuming process that requires a lot of discretion”, said the CEO.
Based on this learning, Sankhya structured a more rigorous evaluation process, which goes beyond financial analysis. “We go through assessments of technology, culture, strategic adherence, as well as the profile of the founders and main executives. We do not buy a solution when the founders or main professionals want to leave the business”, he explained.
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Fernanda Zago, Commercial VP at Sankhya, reinforces that cultural fit is decisive. “If it doesn’t match Sankhya, it’s a problem. It may be the best solution, but it won’t work”, he pointed out.
In the view of André Britto, the company’s CFO, each acquisition aims to fill specific gaps in the original solution, deepening specialties without giving up an integrated proposal. The logic, according to him, is to bring together high-depth solutions in areas such as CRM, tax intelligence, HR and financial management, all connected.
The CFO also highlighted that, currently, the company operates with specific artificial intelligence agents in each solution, each focused on a different pain to reduce the risk of hallucinations. “In the future, we see a centralized database, which is what we have been working on, and these agents will become very intelligent, because they will be able to cross-reference data from different solutions and deliver differentiated intelligence that no one has,” he said, without indicating when this unification should occur.
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