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Bain & Company has bought PiperLab, a Madrid-based consultancy that works with large enterprises to build AI applications.

The deal marks the twenty-sixth competitor acquisition that Bain has made over the past five years. Many of the firm’s most recent purchases have focused on expanding its presence in the AI services market, which is experiencing rapid growth thanks to the industry interest surrounding ChatGPT.

PiperLab has been around since 2015. Its client base includes organizations in major verticals such as the insurance, telecommunications, utilities, logistics and media sectors. PiperLab can work with a company’s internal IT team to find ways of using AI to automate, or at least speed up, repetitive business chores.

Natural language processing is a major focus area for the firm. It can develop NLP applications for tasks such as automatically summarizing customer service requests, which enables help desk reps to write answers faster. PiperLab also develops AI software for use in other areas including marketing automation, demand prediction and supply chain planning.

Bain is folding its firm into its Advanced Analytics Group, the consulting giant’s AI practice. The deal brings the number of employees working at the group to more than 260. Many of those staffers are technical professionals such as data scientists.

Bain not only builds AI models for clients but also packages those models into ready-to-use software that can be adopted by business users. Additionally, the firm advises firms on higher level AI strategy decisions such as what machine learning products to adopt. 

“Our acquisition of PiperLab will enhance our ability to help clients solve some of their most complex challenges at the intersection of business, data science and engineering – a task that can often be challenging, especially during the new era of generative AI,” said Roy Singh, the head of Bain’s Advanced Analytics Group. 

The context for the acquisition is that AI talent is highly difficult to recruit in today’s market. As a result, one of the few ways a firm like Bain can onboard a large number of machine learning experts at once is to buy an AI consultancy. 

“The demand by clients for top tech talent is increasing rapidly as companies determine how to best leverage their data for competitive advantage,” added Ignacio Otero, Bain’s top executive in Iberia. 

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