Celonis Acquires Ikigai Labs to Enhance Enterprise AI Decision Intelligence

Celonis, the global leader in Process Intelligence, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ikigai Labs, a company specializing in AI-powered Decision Intelligence on May 12, 2026. The acquisition aims to integrate Ikigai Labs’ advanced planning, simulation, and forecasting capabilities into Celonis’ Contextual Collaboration Model (CCM), enhancing real-time operational insights and decision-making for enterprises worldwide.

The deal, announced on June 24, 2025, does not disclose financial terms. It marks a strategic step for Celonis to address a critical challenge faced by organizations deploying Enterprise AI: the lack of operational context that limits AI’s effectiveness. The CCM provides a dynamic, real-time digital twin of business operations, translating complex process data into a language AI agents can understand and act upon reliably.

Ikigai Labs brings state-of-the-art decision intelligence technology, including capabilities for planning, simulation, and forecasting, which will be embedded into the CCM. This integration enables organizations to model future scenarios, predict and prevent process failures, and make informed, reliable decisions at scale.

Celonis, headquartered in Germany, is renowned for its Process Intelligence platform that combines process data, business knowledge, and decision intelligence to empower Enterprise AI. Ikigai Labs, founded on nearly two decades of MIT research, specializes in AI models for structured data, causal inference, and large-scale simulation, with proven success in reducing planning cycles in complex areas such as supply chain management.

Carsten Thoma, President of Celonis, emphasizes the importance of operational context for AI effectiveness: “AI is only as good as the context it has. Every organization needs to give its Enterprise AI a holistic, living model of how a business truly operates. This has never been possible until now, with the Celonis Context Model. With Ikigai Labs, we’re extending intelligence beyond current operations to how businesses should and could run tomorrow.”

Executives from leading companies highlight the value of operational context in AI deployment. Jerome Revish, SVP and CTO at a healthcare organization, notes that precision is critical and that AI must be trusted and safe to deploy. Rafael Domene, CIO at Cosentino, stresses that AI agents require deep process understanding to transition from experimental tools to trusted operational actors. Filippo Catalano, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Mondelez International, underscores that operational context is essential for AI investments to generate real value rather than complexity.

The acquisition also grants Celonis exclusive rights to MIT-owned patents licensed to Ikigai Labs, with MIT becoming a shareholder in Celonis. Devavrat Shah, Ikigai Labs co-founder and MIT professor, states, “Together, we provide the fullest operational representation of business reality. AI agents have the hindsight, insight, and foresight to adapt intelligently and deliver expected outcomes.”

Celonis’ platform integrates data from diverse enterprise systems through zero-copy connectors and pre-built integrations with ERP and CRM platforms. It also supports leading agentic AI platforms, ensuring the Context Model is accessible for AI agents regardless of their build environment.

Heather Akuiyibo, Global VP of GTM Integration at Databricks, highlights the synergy between Celonis and Databricks platforms, enabling employees to interact with data and AI agents with trusted business context for faster, better decisions.

Industry experts view this acquisition as a significant advancement in enterprise software. Sandesh Patnam, Managing Partner at a venture firm, describes the combined capabilities as creating a competitive moat by sharpening operational signals and decisions. Ashu Garg, General Partner at another investment firm, calls the integration of decision intelligence and simulation capabilities a defining factor for the next era of enterprise software.

Celonis continues to lead in industrializing AI by combining process data, business knowledge, and decision intelligence to provide Enterprise AI with the operational context necessary for success. Thousands of global enterprises rely on Celonis and its ecosystem to build AI-driven, composable solutions that unlock sustained value.