Vivant Digital will become a brand name in the portfolio of IBM's 'IBM iX' agency, which claims to help businesses through digital transformations and whose Australian clients already include ING, Telstra, Qantas, Water Corporation and Coca Cola Amatil.
Vivant, whose local clients include Australian Super and Optus, employs between 50 and 70 people "depending on client needs at the time", according to founder and chief executive Anthony Farah. He will run IBM iX in Australia and New Zealand following the transaction, which is due to close before the end of the year.
Mr Farah said negotiations with IBM were continuing on how many Vivant staff would be retained. IBM iX employs 15,000 people across 36 'studios' globally, but the company refused to reveal the division's local headcount.
Vivant was launched in 2008 as the second business for Mr Farah, who had previously founded Gravity, a service provider to telcos. Selling to IBM will mark his second stint as an executive for the multinational: he was a principal in its Sydney-based user experience team between 2001 and 2003.
Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed, but Vivant has never taken external capital so proceeds of its sale will be shared between Mr Farah, who owns 51 per cent, and executive directors Fouhad Serhal and Steven Henderson with 25 per cent each, according to Vivant's latest regulatory filings.
"We now have scale and greater opportunity to address the growing needs of CEOs and innovation leaders willing to disrupt the market by seeking out new business models" Mr Farah said of Vivant's acquisition.
"We see it as converging the best of big with the best of small."
IBM has made a string of acquisitions since 2016 as it struggles to build up the strategic side of what had traditionally been a product-based business.
Vivant had a sideline venture capital business - which most recently had backed a Sydney virtual reality school, and made an aborted bid to build a start-up hub at Barangaroo - however Mr Farah said it was now closed for new investments.
