Impel buys retail tech company Outsell for $100 million
Author: Mark Hollmer
Impel has acquired Outsell for more than $100 million in cash in a deal designed to build a bigger automotive retail technology software company focused on artificial intelligence-driven sales and marketing automation.
“We’ve added almost 50 percent more employees, and a third more customers. It’s a huge milestone,” Impel CEO Devin Daly told Automotive News. “I don’t view it as much as an acquisition; it is kind of a refounding of the business.”
The deal includes Impel equity for some of Outsell’s management team and investors, Daly said.
Impel, of Syracuse, N.Y., revolves around an AI-centered digital marketing platform for dealerships. Outsell, based in Minneapolis and launched in 2004, relies on first-party data, machine learning technology and predictive AI to automate and maximize customer engagement.
The combined company employs close to 500 people, Daly said, including the 170 Outsell brings to the deal. With the acquisition, Impel now serves more than 8,000 dealers in 51 countries vs. about 6,000 before the deal closed.
Outsell founder and CEO Mike Wethington, who will join Impel’s board, said it made sense to combine with Impel.
“I am proud of what our team has accomplished, and we look forward to joining with Impel to redefine what’s possible,” Wethington said in a statement.
Outsell will become a division of Impel and be fully integrated by the end of 2024, Daly said.
Impel launched as SpinCar in 2014 before changing its name to Impel in 2024. It has raised more than $126 million in venture investment to date, including a $104 million growth equity financing disclosed in January 2023. Beyond Outsell, Impel acquired Pulsar AI of Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2021, a company developing an AI platform to help businesses manage their communications with customers. In 2022, it acquired Los Angeles-based CarLabs.ai, which produced an AI-driven customer engagement platform designed to automate and personalize sales and customer service through chat, email and other messaging apps.
Underscoring that focus, the company announced in June it had integrated with WhatsApp, one of the most widely used messaging services in the world.
Daly said Outsell makes sense as the company continues to expand and define itself.
“People say that in an AI arms race, the company that will win out is the company that has access to the largest trove of data,” Daly said. “Outsell brings 20-plus years of consumer data. Every day they are tracking something close to 100 million U.S. consumers or car buyers.”
Daly said the company’s marketing automation capabilities are very impressive as well. That technology works with Outsell’s data library to automate “85 different touch points throughout the consumer life cycle,” he said.
More M&A transactions are likely down the line.
“We will be very focused on integrating Outsell for the next six months, but we certainly have the appetite to continue with M&A,” Daly said. “That will remain a part of our growth playbook.”
