Avocado Consulting, an Australian IT services firm, has bought AI Consulting Group (AICG), a Sydney consultancy that builds data and AI systems for companies and government agencies. The deal was announced on Monday, November 2, 2026, and reported by ARN, IT Brief Australia, CRN Australia and techpartner.news. Terms were not disclosed.
All 20 AICG employees move to Avocado, according to ARN: founder Rad Anandakumar, chief operating officer Nicolette Glazewski, 13 consultants and five operations staff. Anandakumar becomes Avocado's head of data and AI and will lead a new practice built around the AICG team.
AICG keeps its own brand for now and describes itself on its website as "An Avocado company". ARN reported that it will be rebranded later.
What AI Consulting Group built
AICG was founded in 2018 and has its head office in Spring Street, Sydney, in the same building as Avocado's Sydney office. It works on generative AI, large language models, AI agents, machine learning, machine vision and data platforms, and has built its own AI agent platform for retailers called Express Agent, according to the trade reports.
Its clients include BHP, the National Rugby League, Fremantle Ports, Downer Group and the Department of Education. Its website also lists Bakers Delight, IP Australia and Travelex. Services on the site include AI strategy workshops, generative AI for enterprises, an AI governance framework, a fixed-price data lakehouse built in five days and an AI training course.
No outside funding for AICG is reported. "In AI, eight years is a long time," Anandakumar told ARN.
“Growing this capability organically would have taken too long.”
Why Avocado is buying
Avocado has worked in IT services for 22 years, according to IT Brief, with offices in Sydney and Melbourne. Its work covers observability, cyber security, operational resilience, quality engineering and testing, project delivery, DevOps and managed services. After the deal it has more than 170 consultants.
The two firms had worked together for about two years before the acquisition, including on a large hospitality project, techpartner.news reported. Avocado's chief executive, Gerardo Barranquero, said building the capability in-house was not an option. "Growing this capability organically would have taken too long," he told IT Brief.
"AI doesn't wait for anyone to catch up," Barranquero told ARN. Avocado has also changed its tagline from "deliver with certainty" to "deliver AI with certainty", CRN Australia reported.
What the new practice will sell
The data and AI practice will offer AI readiness and feasibility studies, data lake design, process redesign, development and testing, and AI governance and observability, according to techpartner.news. Avocado is aiming the practice at state and federal government agencies, pointing to its Australian ownership and locally hosted infrastructure as an answer to data sovereignty concerns.
Anandakumar said the combination matters because AI projects depend on the data and systems underneath them. "AI is only as good as the data it can access and the systems it runs on," he told techpartner.news.
Barranquero told CRN Australia that the whole AICG team had moved, including administrative and sales staff, and that keeping the brand meant little would change in their daily work. He said many organisations were stuck in proofs of concept that did not account for real-world deployment, and that the combined firm could offer one team covering AI, data, security, observability and delivery.
Who AICG's clients will deal with
For AICG's clients, the change is meant to be small at first. The firm keeps its name and its people, and Barranquero told CRN Australia that keeping the brand meant there would be little change to the team's day-to-day work. Clients gain access to Avocado's wider services, which include security testing, observability and managed services.
For Avocado, the purchase adds a client list that spans mining, sport, ports and government, and a founder who started an AI consultancy in 2018, years before generative AI tools became widely available. Barranquero told techpartner.news that acquiring AICG made sense for serving clients in what he called a new AI world.
Neither company said when the AICG brand will be retired or whether its clients will move onto Avocado contracts.
