Private equity funds first started eyeing large accounting firms about a decade ago. Beginning with Eisner Amper, which had about 3,000 staff and billings of $420 million, the early acquisition movement focused primarily on $100M plus firms, then gradually moved down into the large regional firms.
Now, private equity groups are eying even smaller firms, some with only a handful of staff, with annual billings as low as $700,000 to $5 million.
The latest venture, Numica, announced it raised $21 million in combined equity and debt financing from Roosh X and Flashpoint Capital. Numica bills itself as “an AI-first accounting platform that acquires and modernizes small” U.S. accounting” firms.
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Numica buys practices with established client relationships from owners approaching retirement. It then migrates their clients, staff, and workflows onto its in-house AI platform: a general ledger and bookkeeping engine with practice management, billing, and tax filing layered on top. For the client, the experience after the deal stays the same because the change happens on the AI side of the operation.
“Kudos to Numica on successfully entering this segment of the market,” said Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group. “This market has been traditionally served (up until now) by Archer Lewis, Franklin Alliance, Haro Ross, and Platform Accounting. Interestingly, 99% of all accounting and tax firms in the US range from start up to revenues around $4 million so it’s a very wide “blue ocean” out there in terms of firms to choose from! My guess is we will see quite a few PE firms enter this space in the next 1-2 years.”
The increasing implementation of artificial intelligence to automate many routine accounting functions is key to the attraction of private equity groups to smaller practices.
“AI can now handle most of the repetitive operational work inside an accounting practice,” Numica said in a statement. “That raises operational speed, creates capacity for new clients, and frees up staff time for human relationships.”
Numica says it uses AI to cut the manual work required to serve each client, reducing turnaround time and errors, improving quality, and expanding margins without additional hiring. Accountants review the output rather than produce it by hand. It says that smaller firms are easier to integrate and scale out.
Numica launched in June 2025 and acquired its first New York practice several months later. Margins at that practice rose from 37% to 52% within two months and are projected to reach 70%. The company has since acquired7 practices. Numica’s model allows it to keep acquiring at pace.
What Numica acquires is client relationships rather than headcount. Its clients are small businesses such as restaurants, hair salons, and dental practices, where relationships with the accountant often last for many years. Numica says it keeps those relationships in place while it modernizes the operational infrastructure behind them.
The U.S. accounting workforce shrank by more than 300,000 people between 2019 and 2022, a decline of 17%, while demand for the work held steady. Of an estimated 87,000 U.S. accounting firms, roughly 75% of CPAs are set to retire within 15 years, according to the AICPA. Most small-firm owners have no internal successor and no obvious buyer.
“The model is simple: we acquire a profitable business and make it more profitable,” said Slava Orekoff, co-founder and CEO of Numica. “Numica is an AI-first company, and we’re relentless about automating every process we can. But what we value most is the client relationships that accounting firm founders have built over the years, even decades. Anyone who’s spent real time in this industry knows that trust and high-quality service are its best-kept secrets – that’s what we’re preserving.”
“The U.S. accounting industry is an exceptionally large and fragmented market that has historically been underserved by technology, creating a compelling opportunity for Numica’s AI-led approach. The team has already shown it can acquire established practices, preserve trusted client relationships, and materially improve performance. We first backed Numica as an equity investor, and this growth-debt facility gives the company a flexible capital structure and additional firepower to accelerate its acquisition strategy,” said Ilja Velickis, Associate Partner at Flashpoint Growth Debt.
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