TPG’s growth investing platform TPG Growth is making a majority investment into risk intelligence firm Sayari of up to $228 million. Expected to close in the first quarter of this year after regulatory approvals, the transaction will see Sayari’s founders, employees and current investors hold on to a “significant stake” in the company.
“The strategic investment from TPG Growth is an important milestone for Sayari as we revolutionize the landscape of risk intelligence technology,” Farley Mesko, CEO and co-founder of Sayari, told Sourcing Journal. “It’s a very exciting time in the market, and we’re optimistic about what the future holds.”
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Sayari was founded in 2015 and launched its Sayari Graph platform in 2020. Sayari Graph pulls data from multiple sources—including corporate ownership and trade documents—and finds and maps connections between different entities. For supply chain management, this platform enables companies to trace back through their supplier tiers to identify possible risks, such as ESG or regulatory concerns. Users can also check their supplier lists to screen for potential issues.
Today, Sayari Graph is used by more than 100 companies—including Urban Outfitters and Facebook—as well as the public sector, such as users working for regulators, law enforcement and national security.
“In a post-pandemic environment, factoring in geopolitical tension and how that impacts both supply chains and financial flows, there is an increased demand for accountability from both citizens and consumers in the apparel and textile industry especially,” said Mesko. “We see the demand for cross-border transparency only increasing, underscoring the importance of the ability to trace the production and delivery of goods from a specific point of origin.”
The TPG partnership will help support Sayari’s launch of a supply chain illumination platform that will offer “deeper insights” gleaned via artificial intelligence, marking its second product introduction. Within the platform—expected to launch in the first quarter—users can “triage risk by giving a higher priority to certain issues, such as forced labor,” said Mesko.
“We’ve always used AI and machine learning deep in our data processing stack, but we’ve been cautious about introducing it to directly inform the sensitive decisions that both commercial and government customers make; it must be implemented in a responsible way,” said Mesko. “We believe that AI has now evolved to a place where it can be responsibly deployed for these use cases.”
TPG’s investment comes on the heels of the announcement that Sayari has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to help the department identify and investigate entities with potential ties to forced labor.
Sayari has recently been on a growth kick, with demand for its technology propelled in part by ramped up supply chain regulations. Just in the last year, the Washington, D.C.-based company has grown its international business by 950 percent. In 2023, Sayari also added contracts covering trade, forced labor and more in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and the E.U. Last year, Sayari was on both the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 lists that highlight the fastest-growing firms in America, due to its revenue growth of 431 percent in the three-year period from 2019-2022. “We are investing heavily in our customers and in scaling our revenue organization across business segments—public sector, commercial and international,” said Mesko.
In addition to international expansion and the supply chain illumination platform launch, Sayari plans to hire more employees in sales, product and support roles, targeting a total 200 employees by end of this year.
“As the global business landscape continues to evolve, companies are facing an increasingly complex set of risks and are being held accountable for the counterparties with which they partner,” said Mike Zappert, partner at TPG. “Sayari sits at the intersection of these trends. Through its unique data assets built over many years, Sayari’s platform drives greater insights into emerging threats and gives organizations more power to protect the people, businesses and nations they serve.”
For this deal, TPG’s financial advisor was Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and its legal counsel was Kirkland & Ellis. Sayari’s financial advisor was William Blair, and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP was its legal counsel.
TPG Growth invests in early-stage companies, with prior investments including Ipsy, Spotify and Crunch Fitness. “TPG has invested behind leading information services and government technology businesses for more than two decades, and we look forward to partnering with the Sayari team on their journey,” said TPG’s Zappert.
