Key Takeaways

  • Fintech company Vena seeks to scale up by merging with industry peer Acterys, a move that comes amid a flurry of M&A activity in the CFO software market.
  • Toronto-based Vena announced last week its plan to acquire Sydney-based Acterys for an undisclosed amount. Both companies focus on providing financial planning and analysis tools within the Microsoft ecosystem. But according to CEO Hunter Madeley, Vena hopes to fill gaps it sees in its own offerings through the proposed merger.
  • "We are deeply aligned with Microsoft in Excel and Azure Open AI, but less so in several other key applications and technologies, including Power BI and Fabric," he said in an interview.

Deep Dive

Vena is one of many competitors in the increasingly crowded "CFO software market." According to global investment bank Carlsquare, the market is projected to grow from $71 billion in 2023 to $131 billion by 2028.

Another major market player, OneStream, announced last month that it agreed to be acquired by Hg, an investor in software and data businesses, for $6.4 billion.

In December, financial close and accounting automation company Blackline announced the acquisition of New York-based fintech startup WiseLayer for an undisclosed sum.

Meanwhile, finance and HR software giant Workday said in November it agreed to acquire AI agent integration platform Pipedream, also for an undisclosed amount.

According to analysis by global tech investment bank Drake Star Partners, there were over 150 M&A and financing deals in the CFO software market in the 12 months ending June 2025.

A high-growth segment of the market includes FP&A software, benefiting from "increasing demand for agile scenario planning and integrated performance management," Drake Star analysts wrote in a report last year.

For its part, Vena aims to be "the most widely adopted and highest-value planning platform within the Microsoft ecosystem," Madeley told CFO Dive.

"I don't think this signals a belief that Microsoft will dominate the entire office of the CFO," he said. "Rather, it signals our belief that the Microsoft market is very large and that Microsoft is making interesting and smart investments in office productivity tools."

Acterys was an attractive acquisition target partly because it "does something quite unique in helping users derive value from Power BI and Fabric," Madeley said. He also noted that Vena was impressed by Acterys's financial performance, with annual recurring revenue of approximately $13 million.

The deal is subject to approval by Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board, a Vena spokesperson said.

Vena claims to be "the only complete FP&A platform powered by agentic AI, purpose-built to amplify the Microsoft technology ecosystem." In April, Vena reported that 89% of finance teams still rely on Excel despite modern planning tools.

OneStream, which has a broader suite of CFO tools, now describes itself as "the only unified finance platform built entirely on the Microsoft technology stack."

A OneStream blog post from October highlighted the challenges of relying on Excel while acknowledging its continued importance in the CFO office, calling the spreadsheet "finance's Swiss Army knife."

OneStream announced in November an alliance with Microsoft, allowing the financial software maker to integrate its own AI agents into "the most widely used" Microsoft products, including Excel and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

"We look forward to continuing to deepen our strategic partnership with Microsoft as we expand these capabilities and help more finance teams within the Microsoft ecosystem," OneStream CEO Tom Shea said in an emailed statement.

Workday's Adaptive Planning platform also supports Excel, although a blog post the company published last year urged FP&A professionals to move beyond the decades-old Microsoft tool.

"Manual processes, version chaos, and siloed workflows prevent finance from making timely and confident decisions," Workday thought leader Bruno J. Navarro wrote in the article. "Business requirements have evolved, and FP&A must evolve with them."