Robots & Pencils, an applied AI engineering firm, said on October 15, 2026 that it had acquired Tiger Pistol, a marketing automation platform that brands, franchises and resellers use to run digital advertising campaigns across Meta, TikTok, Amazon and other channels. The announcement was issued through PR Newswire with a Cleveland dateline.
Terms were not disclosed. The release gave no price, no employee numbers and no details of how the deal was paid for. Pulse 2.0, which covered the deal the next day, also reported that terms were not disclosed.
Tiger Pistol will become Robots & Pencils' customer experience transformation studio practice. It brings its platform, its product development team and its marketing automation know-how. A notice on Tiger Pistol's website says the company is now part of Robots & Pencils and that its platform, team and workflows remain unchanged.
What Tiger Pistol built
Tiger Pistol sells software that lets large advertisers run many small, local campaigns at once. Its website says it serves franchise systems, multi-location brands and marketing resellers, including resellers that support thousands of small businesses. The platform publishes local campaigns to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Google, and the company has industry pages for beverage, consumer products, health and beauty, agencies and quick-service restaurants.
According to the release, the platform has launched more than four million digital advertising campaigns and has been in the market for more than 15 years. Tiger Pistol is a Meta Business Partner and a badged TikTok Channel Sales Partner. Its website lists a Marketing Technology badge in TikTok's Marketing Partners Program, received in September 2026.
The company did not start in the United States. Mumbrella reported in 2017 that Tiger Pistol was founded in Melbourne, Australia, and had moved its base to Austin, Texas, as it expanded in the US. At that time its platform let brands connect existing Facebook pages and Instagram profiles, set budgets by location and localise copy, while individual locations chose which campaigns to publish and fund. Tiger Pistol's website now lists contacts in Cleveland, Ohio, and Austin. None of the pages we reviewed gave its founding year.
“Marketers came to Tiger Pistol to accelerate scale and speed to market, while maintaining brand control.”
Why Robots & Pencils is buying
Robots & Pencils presented the deal as part of a move away from pure services work toward repeatable products. The firm builds what it calls agentic patterns: ready-made blueprints with working code that can be adapted for each client. It said clients can see live results in as little as 30 to 45 days.
Chief executive Len Pagon Jr. said, as quoted by Pulse 2.0, that brands need agentic systems that are integrated, outcome-driven and able to work at scale. He described the combination as giving clients a repeatable path to measurable results.
Robots & Pencils was founded in 2009 and has delivery centres in the United States, Canada, Eastern Europe and Latin America. It is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, one of 11 inaugural AWS Pattern Partners and a launch partner for AWS's Business Value Realization motion. Its clients work in consumer products and retail, education, energy, financial services, healthcare and manufacturing. The company said some of the combined offerings will be sold through AWS Marketplace.
What changes for customers
Tiger Pistol customers will get AI agents that adjust campaigns using performance data, brand standards and media information, according to the release. They will also get automated production of media, ads and video through Tiger Pistol's Creative Automation Studio.
Beyond advertising, customers will have access to Robots & Pencils' Applied AI Studio and its engineers, as well as other products the firm has built, such as Voice-2-Voice, a voice AI system. Tiger Pistol chief executive Paul Elliott said marketers had come to the company for speed and scale while keeping control of their brand, and that they could now change the whole customer experience.
The founders, the funding and Next Sparc
Steve Hibberd co-founded Tiger Pistol and led it as chief executive. In May 2012, TechCrunch reported that the Australian startup had raised $1 million in angel funding led by Australian investor David Solomon, as it left a closed beta and launched publicly. The product then was a social media marketing tool for small businesses that worked only with Facebook, with other networks planned.
Paul Elliott became chief executive in 2019. His biography on Tiger Pistol's website says he joined after a strategic investment in the company by Next Sparc. Elliott previously served as president of BrandMuscle and held senior roles at agencies including Rosetta.
Next Sparc also appears in Robots & Pencils' history. Horizon Partners, which advised Robots & Pencils at the time, said that in January 2017 the company, then a Calgary mobile app developer led by co-founder Michael Sikorsky, received a majority buyout and recapitalisation from Next Sparc and merged with KINETiQ DIGITAL. Neither the acquisition announcement nor the other pages we reviewed said who owns the two companies today, or whether Next Sparc was involved in this deal. The value of the 2019 investment was not reported, and no other funding round was confirmed in the sources we reviewed.
