GrowthPal raises $2.6 million to accelerate its AI-powered M&A copilot for deal sourcing and execution

GrowthPal today said it has raised $2.6 million in a funding round to accelerate its AI-powered M&A copilot for deal sourcing and execution. The round was led by Ideaspring Capital with participation from prominent global angel investors.

The startup will use the fresh capital to support product development and expand its presence across international markets as demand grows for faster, more programmatic approaches to inorganic growth. 

GrowthPal said M&A teams today are expected to move faster with leaner teams, even as deal sourcing at many companies continues to rely on traditional banker networks, static databases and manual research. This, the startup said, often means buyers see only widely marketed deals, while high-quality off-market opportunities remain hidden.

The startup said deal origination in mid-market and early-stage companies has changed little in decades, even as corporate development teams have become leaner and timelines more compressed.

While platforms such as PitchBook, D&B and Tracxn have improved access to company data, GrowthPal said they largely stop at aggregation. Its own approach, the startup said, applies AI-driven reasoning to help teams identify which companies actually matter based on strategic intent, sector context, and readiness to transact.

“M&A sourcing is where most time and effort is wasted, especially for smaller and mid-market deals,” said Maneesh Bhandari, co-founder and CEO of GrowthPal.

“Teams spend weeks researching, filtering, and chasing opportunities that never go anywhere. We built GrowthPal to help buyers focus only on high-intent, high-fit targets and move from mandate to meaningful conversations far faster.” 

Co-founded by Maneesh Bhandari, Shalu Mitruka and Amaresh Shirsat, GrowthPal positions its platform as an intelligent M&A copilot. When a buyer sets a growth goal, such as entering a new geography or acquiring a specific capability, the system converts that into a clear acquisition thesis. Its AI agents then scan a database of over four million technology companies, analysing signals such as hiring trends, funding history, public filings and online activity. The outcome, the startup said, is a short and focused list of companies that closely match the buyer’s intent.

GrowthPal claims to have supported more than 42 completed M&A transactions and enabled over 210 conversations at the letter-of-intent stage across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

“GrowthPal is solving one of the most under-optimised parts of the M&A lifecycle,” said Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner at Ideaspring Capital. “By focusing on qualified deal discovery and using AI to compress timelines, the team is enabling a more systematic approach to inorganic growth that traditional tools cannot offer.” 

GrowthPal plans to extend its intelligence deeper into the transaction lifecycle, supporting valuation reasoning, deal structuring, and preparation for negotiations.