‘This is going to allow Quantiphi to be a partner of choice for building multi-year system transformations like changing the core processing of an insurance customer or the core processing of a supply chain within an enterprise,’ Quantiphi co-founder Reghu Hariharan.
Quantiphi is acquiring human-centered engineering design superstar Candyspace in a bid to take the lead in building a new generation of end-to-end AI agent applications that reimagine the enterprise of the future.
The acquisition fills a much needed “human-centered” design gap that opens the door for Quantiphi, one of the leading AI solution providers, No. 156 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, to double or triple its revenue by adding robust “humanized” AI native digital engineering and experience capabilities to its arsenal, said Quantiphi co-founder Reghu Hariharan (pictured above).
“The biggest opportunity is combining the human-centered design concept with AI,” said Hariharan. “That’s when you get magic! That’s what every customer of ours is looking to do in the future.”
The London-based Candyspace, which bills itself as a digital product agency, has about 90 employees that provide human-centered design and front end engineering that have helped power dramatic sales gains for customers including the Royal Mint, Rolls Royce and Mazda.
Terms and conditions of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition fundamentally changes the Quantiphi value proposition with the new human design-centered functionality opening the door to provide “big game” multi-year AI end-to-end transformations for customers, said Hariharan.
“This is going to allow Quantiphi to be a partner of choice for building multi-year system transformations like changing the core processing of an insurance customer or the core processing of a supply chain within an enterprise where a lot of SaaS big monolithic ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning Systems) exist,” said Hariharan. “That is big game. Those are big multi-year transformations that reimagine the human interface. That is now possible with Quantiphi and Candyspace.”
Ultimately, the goal is to reduce the number of customers Marlborough, Mass.-headquartered Quantiphi works with so it can provide deep, long-lasting multiyear transformations for an elite set of clients, said Hariharan.
“This provides the potential for us to grow this company 2x and 3x where we are now,” said Hariharan. “When you double down on individual customers they want you to be an end to end provider. That starts not only in the systems that are leveraging AI but also human interactions with those systems. This is going to help us go deep into those customers and make it meaningful for them.”
The acquisition is also going to power Technology Service as a Software (TSAS) gains for Quantiphi, said Hariharan, allowing customers to purchase more AI solutions based on business outcomes rather than as a traditional legacy professional services engagement, said Hariharan.
Matt Simpson, the managing director of Candyspace, said the acquisition paves the way for Quantiphi and Candyspace together to build AI native products from the ground up with user experience at the front end powering big gains for customers.
“Together we are going to create products that are smart, that people can actually navigate, trust and get value from everyday,” he said,
In fact, Simpson said, the combined company is going to accelerate AI adoption among customers by uniting Quantiphi’s AI engineering leadership with Candyspace’s human-centered engineering design leadership.
“If you build products that are 99 percent accurate but only one percent of its intended audience actually use it then there is no return there,” he said. “Bringing those two together is where we see the value.”
One sign of the user interface problem that is prevalent in the AI market is the user interfaces that currently power the large language generative AI models, said Simpson. “That is the basic chatbot interface you would have seen 20 years ago,” he said. “The lag between the UI (user interface) and the power of the backend AI is just mind blowing. That to us feels like the biggest opportunity out there.”
Hariharan, for his part, said the acquisition is going to make it “easy and more pleasing” for customers to interact with AI systems.
“At the end of the day the people who buy from us are humans and the people who buy from our customers are humans,” he said. “How can you forget the humans in that context? The ultimate goal is to make the adoption of AI systems much broader and more effective by humanizing these systems.”
