There were 25 workforce solutions acquisition announcements tracked in January. Here is a recap and highlights from January’s deal activity:

Hunt Equity Opportunities acquires Kelly Services - Staffing.
The deal: Hunt Equity Opportunities has acquired ~92.2% of Kelly Services’ Class B common stock and installed new board leadership in a $106 M+ control transaction.
The angle: This isn’t a routine board shuffle, it’s a legacy staffing icon finally shifting gears under new strategic ownership. After years of sluggish growth and identity drift, Kelly’s new majority holder (and now chair) signals a reset toward value creation, perhaps opening the door for more aggressive M&A or a pivot beyond traditional staffing models that have struggled to scale.

Adecco acquires Advantis - Staffing.
The deal: Adecco acquired Dallas-based Advantis Medical Staffing, a travel nursing and allied health staffing firm with an AI-enhanced recruiting and onboarding platform, to deepen Adecco's North American healthcare capabilities.
The angle: Adecco has been getting lapped in U.S. healthcare staffing by more nimble players, and Advantis (built with a tech-forward model) is the kind of asset that's hard to build from scratch inside a global generalist firm. The "concierge + AI" positioning is the tell here: Adecco isn't just buying volume, they're buying a modern operating model they can point to when hospital systems ask why they should consolidate spend with a 75-year-old Swiss conglomerate over a born-digital competitor.

Toptal acquires NSI - Staffing.
The deal: Toptal, the global remote talent marketplace, acquired NSI, a platform connecting vetted independent experts in advertising, marketing, branding and social media. Its second announced acquisition this month following the Graphite deal.
The angle: Toptal is being very deliberate about which white space it's filling with these two acquisitions: Graphite added finance, strategy, and consulting depth; NSI adds creative and brand marketing, turning its curated freelance network into a full-suite professional services engine. Toptal’s vision isn’t just about scale but about owning the on-demand end-to-end talent stack across functions that matter most to enterprise buyers.

Vensure acquires Distro - Recruitment Platform.
The deal: HR/HCM giant Vensure Employer Solutions acquired Distro, an AI-powered recruiting platform founded in 2021 that offers automated video screening, candidate scoring, and a global talent marketplace of ~1.9 million active candidates across 68 countries.
The angle: Vensure processes over $153B in annual payroll across 161,000 clients. They've now added a AI-native recruiting layer to sit on top of that distribution layer. Distro is a four-year-old platform being handed a firehose of clients overnight. This is either a very smart exit for the founders or a sign that the standalone AI recruitment platform market is crowded enough that plugging into a PEO/HCM giant is the better path to scale than going it alone.

Phenom acquires Included AI - HR Tech.
The deal: Phenom, the applied AI talent experience and workforce intelligence platform, has acquired Included, a Seattle-based agentic AI people analytics provider that surfaces actionable workforce insights for HR and business leaders.
The angle: Phenom is doubling down on agentic AI to solve the persistent data fragmentation problem that bogs down workforce planning and strategic talent decisions. Conversational, autonomous analytics within Phenom is a bet that the future of talent tech is about AI agents that show data AND drive action, making deeper workforce intelligence a real differentiator in the HCM stack.

IntelyCare acquires CareRev - Staffing.
The deal: Tech-enabled healthcare staffing leader IntelyCare has acquired CareRev, an on-demand acute care workforce platform, knitting together acute and post-acute clinical labor solutions under one roof; financial terms weren’t disclosed.
The angle: By uniting IntelyCare’s post-acute strength with CareRev’s acute care marketplace, the combined entity can offer health systems a single pane of glass to manage internal pools, contingent labor, and permanent staff, shifting conversations from spot-fill to strategic labor orchestration in an era of extreme workforce complexity.

System One acquires Cypress Consulting - Staffing & Consulting.
The deal: System One, a specialized outsourced services and workforce solutions firm (10,000+ professionals, 50+ locations), acquired Cypress Consulting, a 2011-founded tech consulting firm specializing in data center network design, cloud architecture, automation, and cybersecurity.
The angle: Data center infrastructure talent is the hottest specialized labor market in the country right now driven by demand for hyperscaler buildouts, AI compute expansion, and enterprise cloud migration. System One is capability-stacking. Cypress can staff and consult on data center buildouts making them a stickier partner than one that can only do one or the other.

Did you read about any other deals we may have missed? If so, please reply with details. LongBoard will review and add our commentary in the next M&A brief!

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More deals to come.

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