McKinsey Acquires Iguazio

McKinsey & Company welcomes Iguazio Ltd, in AI and ML, to its firm.

With the addition of Iguazio’s technology and a team of more than 70 data and AI experts, it will be able to accelerate and scale AI deployments, driving further impact for clients.

To thrive in today’s competitive market, harnessing the power of AI is essential. According to McKinsey research, more than $490 billion was invested in AI by organizations around the globe from 2012 to 2021. But most business leaders are still struggling to translate these investments into concrete returns. To add to the complexity, only 10% of AI projects actually succeed in a real-time business environments.

QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey has been working with clients for more than a decade to embed AI into real-time decision making to help solve the most challenging problems. But one key question remained unanswered: how do organizations successfully deploy and scale AI to unlock real business value?

“The answer to this is multi-dimensional. It requires getting many elements right simultaneously – data, algorithms, IT architecture, capabilities, change management, and domain expertise,” explains Alexander Sukharevsky, McKinsey senior partner and global co-leader, QuantumBlack. “We have been working on a holistic offering that allows us to master all these dimensions in a very intuitive way, and we have road-tested it with various clients across the globe. Our teams have been working on a solution that automates and accelerates AI development, deployment, putting AI applications into production at scale and in real-time in any environment.”

Iguazio founders, from left: Yaron Haviv, CTO; Yaron Segev, COO; Orit Nissan-Messing, VP architecture; Asaf Somekh, CEO
(photo Yanai Yechiel)

Working with Iguazio, QuantumBlack will be able to provide clients with industry-specific AI solutions that are 5x more productive, 8x faster from PoC to production, and 2x as reliable.

“We analyzed more than a 1,000 AI companies WW and identified Iguazio as the best fit to accelerate our AI offering – from the initial concept to production, in a simplified, scalable and automated manner,” says Ben Ellencweig, McKinsey senior partner and QuantumBlack global leader of alliances and acquisitions. “Iguazio has a state-of-the-art technology that has generated significant market traction with some of our marquee clients and earned them top-industry recognition. Strengthening our offering with Iguazio will allow us to present to the market the first holistic solution globally that helps any organization truly harness the potential of AI.”

Over time, the Iguazio and QuantumBlack teams will be integrated, working from a single product roadmap, to bring together the technology assets of each firm into a single product. This new offering will allow to integrate AI in real-time decision making and capture full value to help clients drive sustainable and inclusive growth.

Inside new offering
“This acquisition will enable us to implement AI with fewer resources at lower cost,” says Alex Singla, McKinsey senior partner and QuantumBlack global co-leader. “This is especially meaningful for companies experiencing a critical shortage of tech talent, one of the reasons many AI projects have been delayed.”

This is McKinsey’s first acquisition in Israel. Its newly extended team will serve as the foundation for a new QuantumBlack location, which it expects to expand and grow in the coming years.

“Attracting exceptional tech talent and expanding our tech ecosystem will enable us to welcome colleagues from around the globe to Tel Aviv’s exciting tech scene,” says Matt Fitzpatrick, McKinsey senior partner and QuantumBlack Labs global co-leader.

Iguazio’s 4 co-founders – CEO Asaf Somekh, along with CTO Yaron Haviv, COO Yaron Segev, and VP architecture Orit Nissan-Messing – have been working together since 2001, both in their own start-ups and across multiple organizations, and have developed some of the core technologies of enterprise analytics.

They know how to overcome, the organizational challenges of using AI.

“From a values perspective, we are always thinking first about ‘what is best for our client?’ And we have cultivated an entrepreneurial mindset, creating solutions for our clients that can be individualized to different industries, infrastructures, delivery systems,” says Somekh. “These values are very much in sync with what McKinsey is about.“

For Iguazio colleagues, joining McKinsey offers the chance to deliver greater value to more enterprise clients around the world.

“We have spent years developing and refining our technology. This is an opportunity for wider recognition, learning and skills development, and deepening our pride of ownership,” says Nissan-Messing.

Last month, Forrester designated McKinsey a leader among AI service providers.

“McKinsey’s acquisition of Iguazio and its transformative technology is a testament to its commitment to help enterprises solve the world’s most challenging problems through AI,” says Segev.

“The next phase of AI innovation is among us,” says Sukharevsky. “And we’re proud to be leading this journey.”