Avalara, the US tax and compliance software company, announced on March 2, 2026 that it had acquired Versori, a Manchester startup that uses agentic AI to build and maintain connectors between business systems. Deal terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition covers Versori's technology and its team of 23 staff, BusinessCloud reported. Co-founders Sean Brown and Daniel Jones are staying on, and the business will operate as Versori, by Avalara.
Avalara said Versori will help it build and scale integrations across thousands of systems, including ERPs, e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and financial applications.
What Versori built
Versori was founded in Manchester in 2022 by Brown, its chief executive, and Jones, its chief technology officer. According to its seed investor Stage 2 Capital, the two had previously worked together at the e-commerce platform Mercato, where they ran into the problem of connecting to customers' core business systems.
The company describes itself as an integration platform. Instead of engineers writing and maintaining each connection by hand, Versori uses AI agents to generate connectors and keep them running as the systems on either side change. Avalara's announcement said the approach allows faster deployment, simpler maintenance and global scale across enterprise software.
Versori graduated from Y Combinator in March 2023. BusinessCloud reported that it has worked with Frasers Group, Macy's and the UK Ministry of Defence.
“Compliance at global scale depends on seamless, reliable integration.”
Why Avalara is buying
Avalara sells software that calculates sales tax, files returns and manages exemption certificates. Its products depend on connecting to the systems where transactions happen, such as ERPs and online stores. The company says it has spent more than two decades building one of the largest libraries of tax content and integrations in the industry and supports more than 200,000 direct and indirect customers in more than 75 countries.
Avalara said the deal supports its long-term plan to deliver real-time compliance as part of every transaction worldwide. Versori's co-founders and other team members will work on integration and agentic AI features across the Avalara platform. Avalara already uses its own AI agents to automate compliance work from tax calculations to return filings and exemption certificate management, and it said Versori's cloud-native technology would support its move toward always-on compliance.
"Compliance at global scale depends on seamless, reliable integration," said Scott McFarlane, Avalara's chief executive and co-founder. He said Versori's technology and team would speed up Avalara's ability to connect into commerce systems at scale.
A customer turned buyer
Brown told BusinessCloud that Avalara had been a Versori customer before it approached the startup about an acquisition, and that the timing came as Versori was facing another investment round to fund its growth.
"Avalara were a customer of Versori and want to be involved in every transaction in the world," Brown said. He described the mission of the company since its founding as connecting the world's systems.
Brown, who previously worked at Mercato and Social Chain, also said the sale showed that Manchester can grow companies like Versori, and that he hoped it would bring more investment and talent into the city. He said he had "a lot of unfinished business" and planned to keep building with Versori inside Avalara.
The funding
BusinessCloud reported that Versori had raised $10.5 million in total before the sale. Its largest disclosed round was a £2.75 million (about $3.5 million) seed round in June 2023, led by Stage 2 Capital with angel investors including Cindy Bi of Capital X and Jamie Su. At the time, Versori said it would focus first on integrations with ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, CRMs and other core business software.
When that round closed, Stage 2 co-founder and managing partner Jay Po said more than $350 billion was being spent on complex data integration problems that consultancies and service providers solve by hand, the market Versori set out to automate.
Neither company said how much Avalara paid or how the deal was structured, and Avalara did not say whether Versori's connectors would continue to be sold to outside customers.
