The Hackett Group Announces Strategic Acquisition of Leading Gen AI Development Firm LeewayHertz

Organizations will also combine their AI XPLR and ZBrain.ai platforms in a Joint Venture resulting in a comprehensive Gen AI Ideation through Implementation offering

September 16, 2024 – Miami, FL – The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT), a leading Gen AI strategic consultancy and executive advisory firm today announced the acquisition of LeewayHertz, a highly recognized provider of advanced Gen AI solutions. This acquisition marks a significant milestone in The Hackett Group’s aggressive strategy to become a leading architect of its clients’ Gen AI journey.  The transaction combines Hackett’s enterprise Digital transformation World Class IP with LeewayHertz’s Gen AI advanced solutioning and implementation capabilities, as well as their respective market leading AI XPLR and ZBrain.ai software platforms. The Gen AI consulting and software platform combinations are expected to result in a comprehensive end to end capability that accelerates and enhances its client’s ideation through implementation AI initiatives.

Strategic Integration of AI XPLR and ZBrain

The combination of AI XPLR and ZBrain is expected to redefine how enterprises evaluate and implement AI across their operations. AI XPLR version 2, The Hackett Group’s innovative Gen AI powered platform, provides ideation and design of AI solutions using its breakthrough simulation functionality. By integrating with ZBrain’s advanced Gen AI orchestration platform, this combination is expected to result in an end-to-end platform that not only simulates an organization’s Use Cases opportunities, but also evaluates its feasibility, ROI and accelerates implementation and deployment.

“We are thrilled to welcome Akash Takyar and the entire LeewayHertz team into The Hackett Group family,” said Ted A. Fernandez, Chairman & CEO of The Hackett Group. “This acquisition is meant to highly differentiate our consulting and software platform offerings.  It significantly increases our AI implementation capabilities and highly differentiates and expands our AI XPLR ideation and design platform. The integration of AI XPLR with ZBrain will empower our clients to unlock the value of their data and result in new levels of innovation, customer experience and workflow productivity enabled by emerging Gen AI-powered solutions.”

Creation of ZBrain XPLR Joint Venture

In connection with the acquisition, The Hackett Group and Akash Takyar are creating a joint venture whereby The Hackett Group will contribute the AI XPLR and ZBrain platforms.  The integration of AI XPLR and ZBrain products will enable the joint venture to provide advanced and tailored Gen AI solutions to its clients. Combining AI XPLR’s ideation and simulation capabilities with ZBrain’s robust Gen AI development platform in a new entity will allow The Hackett Group in partnership with Akash Takyar to pursue a software platform growth strategy that will consider strategic funding sources as required after initial funding by The Hackett Group.  This should allow The Hackett Group to pursue an entirely new value creation strategy for its shareholders.  Akash Takyar will become the new CEO of the joint venture, ZBrain, while also leading The Hackett Group’s Gen AI Implementation group.

“We believe this acquisition will unlock the true potential of The Hackett Group’s market leading digital transformation IP during this once in a lifetime technology innovation era,” stated Ted A. Fernandez, Chairman & CEO.  “The creation of a new joint venture is important to us as it should allow us to pursue an entirely new value creation opportunity for our shareholders.  I want to congratulate our entire team for demonstrating tremendous focus, along with great agility and innovation that has allowed us to pivot to Gen AI consulting and implementation solutions, in less than 12 months.”

“The synergy between AI XPLR and ZBrain is expected to provide our clients with a comprehensive AI solution that addresses the entire lifecycle of Gen AI strategy to execution,” said Akash Takyar, CEO of LeewayHertz. “This partnership has the potential to redefine the way AI solutions are envisioned and deployed at scale.”

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) is a leading Gen AI strategic consultancy and executive advisory firm that enables organizations to achieve Digital World Class^® performance. Using AI XPLR™– our Gen AI assessment platform – helps organizations achieve quantifiable, breakthrough results, allowing us to be key architects of their Gen AI journey.  Our expertise is grounded in unparalleled best practices insights from benchmarking the world’s leading businesses – including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 89% of the Fortune 100, 70% of the DAX 40 and 55% of the FTSE 100 – and are delivered leveraging our Digital Transformation Platform, Hackett Connect and Quantum Leap^®.

For more information on The Hackett Group, visit: https://www.thehackettgroup.com/; email info@thehackettgroup.com; or call (770) 225-3600.

About LeewayHertz

LeewayHertz (https://www.leewayhertz.com/ai-development-services-company/) is a trusted leader in AI consulting and development, offering innovative solutions to empower businesses with the transformative capabilities of artificial intelligence. Specializing in enterprise-grade AI applications, LeewayHertz leverages cutting-edge technologies like generative AI, computer vision, and machine learning to help companies optimize processes, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth. LeewayHertz’s flagship product, ZBrain (https://www.leewayhertz.com/enterprise-generative-ai-platform/), a low-code generative AI orchestration platform, has been instrumental in helping enterprises integrate AI into their operations with ease. By leveraging proprietary data and building AI solutions for managing complex workflows, ZBrain enables businesses to unlock the full potential of AI, resulting in increased efficiency, cost savings, and accelerated innovation.

The Hackett Group, Hackett-Certified, quadrant logo, World Class Defined and Enabled, Quantum Leap, and Digital World Class are the registered marks of The Hackett Group.

Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward-Looking” Statements

This release contains “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” seeks,” “estimates,” or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability to successfully integrate the acquired company’s operations and employees with our existing business, the ability to realize anticipated synergies and cost savings, our ability to successfully combine the technologies and capabilities of the companies, potential difficulties in maintaining relationships with customers, employees, and suppliers, unexpected costs, charges, or expenses resulting from the acquisition or the joint venture, adverse changes in economic conditions including the demand for generative artificial intelligence products and services, that may impact the acquired business or the joint venture, changes in applicable laws or regulations that may impact the operations of the combined company or the joint venture, the possibility that the anticipated benefits of the acquisition or the joint venture may not be realized within the expected time frame or at all, the ability of The Hackett Group to effectively market its digital transformation, artificial intelligence and other consulting services, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.