Can AI find buyers for my company?

What AI buyer matching actually does

Finding buyers used to mean an analyst working through databases, annual reports and memory for weeks. A matching engine does the same narrowing as a set of filters, in this order:

1. Sector appetite. Who already buys businesses like yours? Each buyer's stated target sectors narrow the field first.
2. Market coverage. Who is in your market, or wants to be? Some buyers name a country. Many cover it through a Southeast Asia, Asia or global mandate.
3. Size fit. Who can actually write the cheque? Where a buyer has stated a target revenue range, a business outside that range is filtered out.
4. Exclusions. Strategy and stated exclusions, checked before anyone sees your name.

The output is a count, then a short list. On Ayebot the free buyer finder runs sector, market and size in three taps (size is optional) with no name or email, and returns how many acquirers on the register fit. A short list is ranked by the engine and chosen by a person.

What the data shows for Singapore

The table is the screen for a Singapore business in each of the 12 sectors on the register. "Trade buyers" are strategic corporates. "Fit under S$5m revenue" counts buyers whose stated target range fits a business of that size, plus buyers who have not stated a range; the number in brackets is those with a stated range that fits.

Source: Ayebot buyer register, de-duplicated, synced 13 October 2026; published at ayebot.com/data/buyer-index.json. A buyer can appear in more than one sector. Trade buyers and private equity do not add up to the total: family offices, other investors and buyers not yet classified make up the rest. Headquarters where identifiable.

Across the whole register: 2,392 acquirers, of which 1,571 are trade buyers and 410 are private equity, headquartered in 32 countries, with 213 headquartered in Japan. Of the 1,479 buyers whose headquarters could be identified, 83% are based outside Singapore.

Three things the screen reveals

1. For a small business, size is the sharpest filter

For a healthcare business in Singapore, 192 acquirers have the sector and the market. Ask for a business under S$5m in revenue and the count falls to 64. Only 7 of those 64 have stated a target range that fits; the other 57 have simply not stated one. Move the same business to S$20m to S$50m in revenue and the count is 172.

The pattern repeats across sectors. In financial services, 49 acquirers cover Singapore and 7 remain for a business under S$5m, none of them with a stated range that fits.

What this means for a founder: a smaller business does not have fewer buyers because buyers dislike it. It has fewer buyers whose stated cheque size matches. The answer is usually to reach the right few rather than blast the many, and to check the unstated ones by hand.

2. Trade buyers outnumber private equity in most sectors, but not all

Across the register, trade buyers outnumber private equity by close to four to one (1,571 to 410). In building services the split for Singapore is 135 to 12; in food and beverage, 68 to 5. Healthcare is the split that matters: 73 trade buyers to 69 private equity firms, close to even. Education is the one sector where private equity edges ahead, 8 to 7.

A machine can show you that split in seconds. Deciding whether a strategic buyer or a fund is the right owner is a judgement call; Growth Alliance Capital's guide to trade buyers versus private equity covers the trade-offs.

3. Outside Singapore, most buyers arrive through a regional mandate

For a healthcare business in Malaysia, 175 acquirers on the register cover the market, but only 29 name Malaysia specifically. 132 cover it through a region-wide Southeast Asia or Asia mandate and 14 through a global one. In the Philippines it is 162 covering, 9 naming the country, 137 through a regional mandate and 16 through a global one.

An engine that matched only on country names would miss most of these buyers. It also means the person deciding on a Philippine or Thai business often sits outside the country, in a regional or head office, which changes who you approach and in what language. Ayebot runs separate hunts for Japanese and Korean acquirers in their own languages and sources.

Where AI stops

The screen is fast and it is useful. It is also honest only if you know its limits:

• A count is not a promise of interest. "On the register" means listed in it, not a relationship, and stated appetite changes with each buyer's strategy and budget cycle.
• The register reflects where we have looked. It is built from precedent transactions, company disclosures and buyer research. A buyer that has never disclosed an appetite will not appear until someone finds it.
• Judgement is not a filter. Which five buyers to approach first, in what order, with which story, is chosen by a person who can weigh relationships, timing and how a buyer behaves in negotiation.
• Confidentiality is a process, not a feature. Buyers should see an anonymous profile first and your name only after they sign a non-disclosure agreement. On Ayebot, every approach is drafted by the engine and nothing reaches a buyer until a person approves it.
• Contacts must be real. A matching engine that invents an email address is worse than none. Ayebot never invents an address; one derived from a company's email format is flagged as such.

How to use this if you are thinking of selling

1. Run the screen. Use the buyer finder for your sector and market, then add your size band to see how much the count moves.
2. Read your sector page. Each sector page shows the market-by-market picture, the buyer type mix and the size bands.
3. Check what buyers will test. The two-minute readiness check asks twelve questions on what buyers examine in due diligence.
4. Talk to a person before you talk to a buyer. A count tells you the market exists. Turning it into an offer is advisory work, done by Growth Alliance Capital.

How we count

• Source: Ayebot's buyer register, synced 13 October 2026, de-duplicated on normalised company names.
• Sector and market: a buyer is counted when its stated target sectors include the sector and its stated geographies name the market or carry a region-wide or global mandate.
• Size: uses each buyer's stated target revenue range; buyers with no stated range are included and shown separately.
• Buyer type: from the category recorded for each buyer; private equity-backed operating companies are counted as trade buyers.
• What we never publish: buyer names, client names or figures from live sales. Counts only.

These counts refresh each time the register syncs. The method behind the finder, the readiness score and the valuation range is on how Ayebot works.