Avocado Consulting acquires AI Consulting Group to launch data and AI practice

Australian IT professional services firm Avocado Consulting has acquired AI Consulting Group (AICG), a specialist data and AI consultancy, establishing a new data and AI practice and taking its combined headcount to more than 170 consultants.

AICG founder Rad Anandakumar will lead the new practice as head of data and AI at Avocado.

The acquisition brings a team of 20 across from AICG, which has spent more than eight years delivering AI solutions across retail, finance, government and mining for clients including BHP, the NRL, Fremantle Ports, Downer Group and the Department of Education.

AICG's capabilities span generative AI, large language models, AI agents, machine learning, machine vision and modern data platforms. The firm has also built a proprietary AI agent platform, Express Agent, for the retail sector.

AI Consulting Group will continue to operate under its current brand initially, and identify itself as an Avocado company going forward. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

For Avocado, the deal adds specialist AI and data engineering depth to its existing delivery, observability and cybersecurity offer. The company said it had worked alongside AICG for the past two years, including on a large hospitality project where the two firms contributed complementary skills.

Gerardo Barranquero, chief executive of Avocado Consulting, said acquiring AICG was faster than building the capability organically.

"For Avocado to best service our clients in this new AI world it makes perfect sense to acquire AICG," Barranquero said.

"AICG brings AI specialists who live and breathe data lakes and agentic AI solutions daily. As one company we can fast track clients from their proof of concepts to production solutions.

"Providing both AI solutions and end-to-end observability will place Avocado in a unique position."

The new practice will offer services spanning AI readiness and feasibility studies, data lake design, process re-engineering, development and testing, and AI governance and observability.

Avocado said it is also targeting state and federal government agencies, with its Australian ownership and locally hosted infrastructure positioning it to address data sovereignty requirements.

Anandakumar said the move gives AICG's team a broader engineering and security foundation.

"AI is only as good as the data it can access and the systems it runs on," he said.

"Joining Avocado adds engineering, security and resilience depth to what we do, and gives our team a springboard for larger, more ambitious projects."