Software firm FabricaONE.AI plans one or two M&A deals with IPO proceeds in 2026-2027
MOSCOW. April 20 (Interfax) - Fabrika PO, a developer of software based on AI that operates under the FabricaONE.AI (F1AI) brand and is part of Softline Group , plans to acquire one or two companies in 2026-2027 and to fund the deals with proceeds from its IPO, Fabrika PO CEO Maxim Tadevosyan said.
Fabrika PO said on Monday that it intended to hold an IPO before April is out and that expanding its funding opportunities for strategic initiatives and M&A were among the purposes of the offering.
"We see targets on the market. There are one or two companies that we would like to acquire in 2026-2027 using funds raised from the stock market. We are essentially tapping the stock market specifically to raise investment funds for the purchase of one or two companies," Tadevosyan said during an online meeting with bloggers on the Moscow Exchange platform.
He said the company was looking at firms with expertise in industrial assistants and industrial digitalization, as well as those involved in small language models (SLM), their pre-training, and the creation of hardware and software systems with them. Fabrika PO could do a deal in this area within a year, Tadevosyan said.
"From a custom development point of view we're looking at teams - not even companies, not M&A deals, but teams with long-term motivation machine learning and training small language models," he said.
Tadevosyan said that owing to the risks and high cost of capital, Fabrika PO had completely abandoned venture capital investments and did not intend to acquire companies with negative EBITDA. "We buy most companies in deals where we buy them out over 3-5 years, tied to a business plan, and the business plan is tied to incremental guidance. For us, these are red lines that we will follow to the letter adhere and which we believe enable us to make good deals," he said.
Tadevosyan also said the company planned to enter into long-term partnerships, "possibly shareholder ones," in 2026-2027.
One of the partnerships is planned for 2026 with a Russian company in the field of technological infrastructure and a large language model (LLM). As part of this partnership, the parties intend to combine efforts in a number of areas related to the automation and digital transformation of the industrial sector.
In 2027, a joint R&D center is planned with a financial-industrial group to develop industrial assistants that can improve the efficiency of industrial and manufacturing cycles at large factories. Tadevosyan said this project still involved "testing a number of hypotheses, verifying them and then agreeing on the terms."
