AI, M&As to drive Stefanini’s investments by 2026

Brazilian IT multinational Stefanini projects investments of 1bn reais (US$200mn) over the next three years, concentrated on AI development and acquisitions.

Generative "AI is revolutionizing the market,” CEO and founder Marco Stefanini told reporters on Friday.  

Stefanini, which competes in services with the likes of Accenture and TCS, is partnering with big techs such as Microsoft on genAI products. Amazon, IBM, Google, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Siemens and Honeywell are some of its other traditional tech partners.

The company has already exceeded the 500mn reais in M&A investments it had earmarked for this year, Stefanini said.

Stefanini is considered one of the most globalized Brazilian companies, taking into account revenues coming from overseas, global workforce, clients’ distribution and physical presence. The firm serves clients in 104 countries and has subsidiaries in 41. Its total client base surpasses 1,000 companies, of which 580 are outside Brazil, according to the executive.

The company completed three acquisitions this year: Safeway, the Italian firm Solve.it and Tatic. Since 2020, Stefanini has reported 20 M&As. Questioned by BNamericas, the CEO said other deals are being discussed but typically take over a year to be concluded after negotiations, due diligence and term agreements.

The company is projecting 7bn reais in 2023 revenues, a growth of up to 20% over 2022. “It’s a significant number. The technology market in general is growing much less than that, in single digits,” Stefanini said.

This year, Europe and Brazil are set to be the highlights. The first is set to grow by 35% in revenue terms and reach 15% of Stefanini’s total sales. “This is the company’s best year in Europe, which has always been the region with the smaller growth rates in the group.”

Brazil sales are expected to grow around 20%.

AI BET

More than 100 global customers currently use the Sophie digital assistant powered by traditional AI and developed by Stefanini.

One of the company's new business fronts is SophieX, an evolution of the solution with large language models and genAI capabilities. 

Stefanini also said it is working with more powerful AI engines for prompts and content creation, having created vertical-specific solutions with over 1,000 pre-trained prompts.

“AI has some hype, but it has a very large and significant impact on the market. There are competitors talking about investments of US$1bn, but they still have to go for most of it. We have an edge as we've been working on this for years,” the CEO said.

Coding, cybersec, workforce/help-desk, financial services and manufacturing are the segments that can benefit the most from genAI, according to Stefanini.

Beyond AI, other areas of focus for the company are cybersecurity – with 70% of sales coming from outside Brazil – analytics, digital marketing and agile development.