Syndio Acquires Embrace.ai for Agentic AI in Pay Decisions

Syndio bought Embrace.ai to speed up its agentic artificial intelligence work for pay equity software. The deal adds a team that builds AI agents for business workflows, Syndio said Tuesday.

Syndio's platform helps companies analyze and govern pay decisions. The company rebranded it as Decision Intelligence for Pay in May and added a product called Decisions that puts real-time pay data in the hands of managers.

Embrace.ai focuses on deploying AI automation across workflows. Its full team will join Syndio. Co-CEO Derek Butts becomes senior vice president of product strategy. Co-CEO Seth Halpern will serve as a strategic adviser.

“The Embrace.ai team was built around exactly that principle,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in the release. “They bring a governance-first approach to enterprise AI and deep operating experience helping organizations configure, control and deploy AI agents with appropriate guardrails. That expertise will help us move significantly faster as we build the next generation of pay intelligence.”

Butts said the combination of Embrace.ai's AI-native platform with Syndio's leadership in pay decisions for global enterprises is what excited them.

Syndio CFO Milan Parikh told PYMNTS in January 2023 that the company built its platform to give organizations continuous insights into payroll spend against equity KPIs. The acquisition accelerates that vision by adding agentic capabilities that can act on those insights.

The deal closed this week. Terms were not disclosed.