Devoteam, the Paris IT services group its co-founders took private with KKR in 2021, has made 33 acquisitions of IT services companies since 2015 in our records, mostly small specialists. Almost half of them are partners of Microsoft, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, AWS or SAP. It pays at or below the market: a median of 0.7 times revenue on the 18 deals its filings price, against 1.1x across IT services. For most of its listed years it bought a majority and left the founders a minority, with earn-outs a small part of the price.
It is one of the most active buyers of cloud and platform consultancies in Europe, and it ranks among the leading strategic buyers of IT services companies in our ranking. Founded in 1995 by Godefroy and Stanislas de Bentzmann, it aims to take revenue from €1.13bn in 2023 to €2bn in 2028, by growing on its own and by buying.
For spend and prices we used Devoteam’s annual reports for its listed years, 2015 to 2020, its 2021 interim report and its releases since. The deal list combines Mergermarket with the acquisitions we traced in its reports and releases.
Devoteam Group: Owners and Structure
Devoteam was founded in 1995 and listed on Euronext Paris in 1999. In July 2020 the de Bentzmann brothers, together with Yves de Talhouët and with KKR as financial partner, launched a cash offer of €98 a share through their holding company, Castillon. Castillon held just over 80 percent once the offer closed, crossed 90 percent in October 2021, and the shares were delisted on 31 December 2021. Castillon, owned jointly by KKR and the founders, now holds about 90 percent of the group.
The business behind the acquisitions is large and profitable. Devoteam reported revenue of €1.13bn for 2023, with organic growth of 9 percent and an operating margin of 10.5 percent, and it describes itself as a team of 11,000 specialists across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. About half of its 2023 revenue came from work with five strategic partners: AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow. The group is organized around those platforms, with units such as Devoteam G Cloud for Google, Devoteam A Cloud for AWS and Devoteam N Platform for ServiceNow, and most acquisitions feed one of them.
Acquisitions are run from the center: in its listed years Devoteam’s annual report placed the search for external growth with the Management Board and Group Finance, and its internal audit team reviewed acquisitions and disposals systematically. Each strategic plan has counted on acquisitions. Scale!, announced in January 2017, counted on acquisitions adding at least €200M of revenue by 2020. The plan announced at the delisting aimed for €1.5bn of revenue in 2025. AMPLIFY, announced in October 2024, aims for €2bn in 2028, with half of revenue from AI projects, up from 5 percent in 2023.
How Many Companies Devoteam Has Acquired
Devoteam made 33 acquisitions of control from 2015 to 2025: two in 2015, a peak of seven in 2018, four in 2021 and four in 2024, about three a year on average.
Devoteam has kept buying since the delisting, with ten acquisitions from 2022 to 2025. It signed for two units of the German group affinis in September 2025, and in January 2026 it signed for an automation specialist in France and an Atlassian partner in Spain.
From 2015 to 2020 Devoteam spent €124M in cash on new acquisitions and a further €35M buying out minority shareholders in companies it already controlled, €160M in all, while its revenue grew from €485M to €760M. The first half of 2021 alone added €25M for acquisitions and €24M for minority buyouts. The buyouts are money paid to minority holders, founders and managers among them, for the stakes they kept at closing.
What Size of Company Devoteam Buys
Devoteam buys small: across the 18 acquisitions priced in its filings, median target revenue was €5.5M, and 17 of the 18 had revenue under €25M. Headcount tells the same story: of the 22 deals with a published headcount, 14 had between 25 and 250 people, and the range ran from about ten people to a nearshore business of about 630.
The median enterprise value across those 18 deals was €5.9M. Combined with what Devoteam says it looks for, the picture is of a buyer adding specialist teams one country at a time: if your business has revenue of a few million euros up to about €20M and a certified team on one platform, you sit squarely in the range Devoteam buys.
Sixteen Platform Partners Among 33: Devoteam’s Acquisition Strategy
| Capability | Acquisitions |
|---|---|
| Data and AI | 7 |
| Microsoft cloud and workplace | 4 |
| Google Cloud | 4 |
| ServiceNow | 4 |
| Digital engineering, DevOps and nearshore delivery | 4 |
| Cybersecurity | 3 |
| IT and management consulting | 3 |
| AWS | 2 |
| SAP | 1 |
| Business automation (Atlassian) | 1 |
The table covers the 33 acquisitions, classified from the target descriptions and Devoteam’s own releases. Sixteen of the 33 are partners of a software platform, which matches how Devoteam earns its revenue. Salesforce, the fifth strategic partner, accounts for zero acquisitions. Devoteam has also bought a software publisher, which sits outside this table.
The focus has moved over time: the deals of 2015 to 2018 added consulting, data, engineering and nearshore capacity across eight countries, from France and Spain to Sweden and Portugal. From 2019 to early 2022 Devoteam bought Google Cloud and Microsoft partners and data firms, and in 2022 a cybersecurity firm in Spain. In 2023 it added a data firm in Portugal and a DevOps firm in Spain, and since 2024 it has bought ServiceNow specialists in the Nordics and the Netherlands, an AWS partner in the United Kingdom and a business automation firm in Spain.
Devoteam states its criteria briefly: it calls its acquisitions targeted, its Spanish business describes them as companies with a high degree of specialization, and its December 2024 release speaks of investing in dynamic and highly specialized companies, a strategy it plans to intensify. AMPLIFY adds the direction: AI, data, automation and industry expertise, with energy named as a priority when Devoteam signed for the affinis units. For an owner, the question Devoteam asks is which platform team or capability you add, and in which country.
Where Devoteam Buys
Devoteam bought in nine countries, all of them in Europe. Spain leads with eight acquisitions, followed by France with seven, Denmark with five, Sweden and Portugal with three each, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium with two each, and the United Kingdom with one.
Spain shows how the model works in one market. Devoteam’s Spanish business reported revenue of €110M in 2023, up 24 percent and about 10 percent of the group, and the company named acquisitions of specialized firms as one of its main routes to growth there.
Devoteam works well beyond its acquisition map. IDC has named it the leading IT consultancy in Saudi Arabia, and all 33 of its acquisitions were in Europe. In 2024 Devoteam sold 40 percent of its Middle East business to solutions by stc and sold its Mexican operations to Hiberus.
What Devoteam Pays: Acquisition Multiples
While it was listed, Devoteam published the price of its acquisitions deal by deal. The notes to its annual reports give the consideration paid, the stake bought, the cash acquired and the target’s revenue in its last financial year. From those notes we computed an enterprise value for 18 acquisitions of IT services companies from 2015 to 2021, all of them private companies: the consideration grossed up to 100 percent, less the cash acquired.
The median was 0.7 times revenue, with an interquartile range of 0.6x to 1.3x, and the 18 deals together came to 0.8 times their combined revenue. Across all IT services deals in our valuation research the median is 1.1x revenue, on 1,051 transactions from January 2015 to June 2026. Size explains part of the gap, since small IT services deals price lower: our research puts deals under $5M at a median of 0.6x and deals of $5M to $20M at 1.0x. Devoteam’s own medians by deal size were 0.7x on six deals below €5M, 0.9x on six from €5M to €10M and 0.8x on six above €10M. It paid slightly above the market for the smallest deals and below it above that size.
These prices cover small deals as fully as large ones, because a listed Devoteam reported prices for its small acquisitions as well as its large ones. The spread tracks the business mix: the three highest multiples went to a cybersecurity firm and two cloud and data specialists, which matches the premium our research finds for cybersecurity services and for data and analytics, both at 1.9x revenue. The lowest went to two delivery businesses with large teams and to a Google Cloud partner whose revenue was stated under local accounting rules, a basis that counts license resale in revenue and lowers the multiple.
As a margin bridge, 0.7x revenue equals 7 times EBITDA for a business with a 10 percent EBITDA margin and 4.7 times at 15 percent, against a median of 10.4x across IT services deals in our research. Devoteam itself was valued at 1.1 times revenue and 8.7 times EBITDA when its founders and KKR bid for it in 2020.
Where Devoteam bought a majority stake, the price describes control at closing, and founders sold the remaining shares later at market price or on performance conditions. Every price in the set dates from 2015 to 2021, and Devoteam has published zero deal prices since it left the stock market. Contingent payments were small, so the price agreed at signing was close to the price paid.
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How Devoteam Structures a Deal
For most of its listed years Devoteam bought a majority and left the founders a minority. Fourteen of its 22 acquisitions from 2015 to mid-2021 started below 100 percent, most of them between 58 and 88 percent. Its 2020 annual report lists the call options it held over the remaining shares, exercisable at market price or on performance conditions and in stages: one third a year over three years in one case, a third a year starting two and a half years after closing in another, a single tranche about four and a half years after closing in a third. The minority holders of several subsidiaries also held put options, and at the end of 2020 Devoteam carried €33M of liabilities for minority put options and earn-outs.
The pattern changed in 2021: the eleven acquisitions from September 2021 on were all for 100 percent. Devoteam has kept buying units as well as companies: a cloud business carved out of a Danish telecoms group, a ServiceNow consultancy carved out of Eraneos, the ServiceNow team of KPMG Denmark, taken over as a business transfer, and the Spanish business of a data management company, bought as an asset transfer.
Earn-outs are modest: across the 18 priced deals, contingent consideration came to €8.4M of €138M, and at the end of 2020 Devoteam’s earn-out commitments totaled €3.0M across five companies, measured on future revenue and operating margin. Devoteam ended 2018, its busiest year for acquisitions, with €40M of net cash.
For an owner, the structure decides how much of the value arrives later. A deal for 70 or 75 percent with options over the rest turns part of the sale into a second negotiation, priced on a formula and on how the business performs inside Devoteam. The formula, the timing, the put rights and the decisions you keep while the options run carry as much weight as the price for the first tranche. A whole-company sale, the structure Devoteam has used since 2021, puts almost all of the value in the first payment, and our guide to strategic versus financial buyers sets out how a private equity buyer would share it differently.
What Happens After Closing
Devoteam co-brands first and absorbs later. Acquired firms joined as “Avalon by Devoteam”, “Fourcast by Devoteam” or “Nubalia, part of Devoteam”, and then merged into the group brand: TMNS was operating as one company with Devoteam’s Dutch business within months, Cloudeon completed its integration a year after the deal, and Jayway became Devoteam Creative Tech about three years after it joined. Devoteam keeps reorganizing along platforms and regions: in 2024 it merged its German and Alpine ServiceNow activities into one unit, and in 2026 it combined Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg into one Benelux team.
Devoteam’s releases record management staying on: Integrity’s management team continuing to run the business, Fourcast’s co-founder and chief executive remaining in charge, and Ubertas’s co-founders joining Devoteam’s AWS unit. Where founders kept a minority stake, the options over their shares tied them to the business for two to five years.
Devoteam also sells what falls outside its focus. From 2016 to 2020 it sold eight activities, among them a staffing intermediary, a license reseller and a start-up it had owned for a year, and in 2024 it sold its Mexican operations and 40 percent of its Middle East business. The disposals were of activities outside its consulting and platform work, or of markets outside its focus.
Devoteam’s Platform Focus Meets Accenture, Qodea and Inetum
In our view Devoteam is Europe’s consolidator of platform consultancies, buying partners of Google Cloud, Microsoft, ServiceNow and AWS. In our research it leads the buyers of Google Cloud partners jointly with Qodea, ranks sixth among buyers of cloud services providers and tenth among buyers of IT consulting firms, and it is an active buyer of ServiceNow partners and AWS partners. Overall it is among the most active buyers in our ranking of strategic acquirers of IT services companies.
Every one of those markets has other active buyers. Accenture, Cognizant and IBM buy cloud partners for capability; Qodea, Claranet and Ekco are cloud platforms under private equity owners; Inetum, Cognizant and DXC buy ServiceNow partners.
Is This a Good Time to Sell to Devoteam?
Devoteam is buying, and AMPLIFY counts on external growth to reach €2bn of revenue in 2028. It completed one acquisition in 2025, signed for the affinis units in September 2025 and signed for two more businesses in January 2026. Its recent announcements point to where it wants capability: a partnership with Google Cloud aimed at $2bn of revenue for its Google Cloud unit, a practice for AI agents, and membership of Anthropic’s Claude partner network.
The wider IT services market is pricing more cautiously than in 2021 and 2022, when the median deal fetched 1.4x revenue. In our valuation research the median IT services deal priced at 1.0x revenue in 2025, and our update for the last quarter of 2025 put the median EV/EBITDA at 8.8x. The first half of 2026 points to a partial recovery, at 1.3x on 22 deals, an early indication more than a trend. The outlook in that research expects AI coding tools to reduce the labor content of software development work while demand grows for data, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI integration.
The case for talking to Devoteam now is strongest for a specialist on one of its platforms or in data, cybersecurity, automation or AI, with certified people and named clients in a country where Devoteam wants scale. Devoteam’s plan calls for that profile, and our research finds demand for those segments growing across the market. For a business built on time-and-materials development, the pressure from AI tools argues for preparing the answer on AI before the first meeting. The latest prices are in our IT services valuation multiples research.
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