Baker McKenzie has advised SAP, the German software giant which specializes in software and services for businesses, in the context of its acquisition of the start-up Recast.ai.

This transaction will allow SAP to complete its machine learning service offering and is part of the €2 billion investment plan to promote innovation in France which was launched by the software publisher in January 2018.

Recast.ai is a collaborative development platform for chatbots founded in 2015 by three young graduates from the school “42” (Jasmine Anteunis, Julien Blancher and Paul Renvoisé) and the French entrepreneur Patrick Joubert. Located at the Microsoft incubator “Station F”, the start-up designs all the development steps of an intelligent agent project, from modelling conversational flows to the deployment of the bot, via its integration in instant messaging (Messenger, Skype, Slack). Its chatbot programming activity for large corporates enabled it to triple its annual turnover in 2017 to around €3 million.  

“SAP has made a strategic choice with this transaction: to pursue its investments in France and continue to support start-ups with which commercial synergies are possible” explained Stéphane Davin, partner at Baker McKenzie.

Baker McKenzie advised SAP with Stéphane Davin, partner, Hugo Sanchez De La Espada, partner, and Rodrigue Tchouale, associate, working on M&A aspects. Rémy Bricard, partner, and Marie-Catherine Ducharme, associate, worked on ITC aspects and Jérémie Paubel, a partner specialising in labour law, was also consulted.