Veeam Software has agreed to buy data security and compliance startup Securiti AI, shelling out a hefty $1.725 billion (£1.3bn) for the AI-powered platform.

Announcing the deal, Veeam said that by joining forces, the two companies could give their customers more control over their data, as well as tighten security in an era of increasingly unpredictable AI.

By acquiring Securiti AI, Veeam is aiming to tackle the headache of managing fragmented data, scattered across apps, clouds, devices, SaaS providers, and backups. The company said it will look to provide IT leaders with a single dashboard to see, secure, and control all their data, whether live or stored, while keeping downtime and data loss to a minimum. 

Expected to close later this year, the acquisition will see Veeam integrate Securiti AI’s Data Command Centre product, as well as its other existing offerings, with Securiti founder and CEO Rehan Jalil taking a role at the US-based software giant as president of security and AI.

“Bringing together our unique capabilities with Veeam…creates a new value proposition for customers with one data command centre delivering data resilience, DSPM, privacy, governance, and AI trust for your entire data estate,” said Jalil.

“Veeam’s global reach and innovation, combined with our technology and intelligence, will provide customers with unmatched business resilience and security to fully unlock the benefits of AI.”

The deal marks the latest in a series of major buyouts for Veeam, with the software firm having also closed deals with ransomware recovery specialist Coveware and SaaS backup company Alcion last year. 

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Last year saw private equity firm Insight Partners, Veeam’s largest shareholder, close a $2 billion (£1.5bn) secondary sale, valuing the firm at $15 billion (£11.2bn), which the firm said would allow it to pursue an agenda of strategic partnerships and acquisitions as it looked to take a bigger chunk of the AI data pie.

That strategy has occurred to others recently, too. In May, tech giant Databricks acquired Neon, a startup working on an open-source mirror to AWS Aurora’s PostgreSQL, for around $1 billion (£749m), while later that month, Salesforce bought out data software firm Informatica for around $8 billion (£5.9bn).

This flurry of top-tier M&A activity in the data subsector is fairly clear evidence that firms are feeling the FOMO when it comes to AI, with enterprise businesses looking to consolidate their tech stacks in a race that doesn’t look to have a finish line in sight.