Guidewire buys hyperexponential for $1.7B in cash

Insurance software maker Guidewire has agreed to buy London-based hyperexponential for $1.7 billion in cash. Up to $400 million more is tied to revenue targets, Guidewire's announcement said on October 27, 2026. The deal is a large bet that AI agents will soon help decide which business risks insurers take on, and at what price.

Guidewire announced it at its Connections conference in Las Vegas. It expects the deal to close in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2027.

What hyperexponential makes

hyperexponential sells software called hx. It is used by insurers that cover businesses against property damage and liability claims. The industry calls this commercial P&C, short for property and casualty.

The software helps with underwriting. That is the work of deciding whether to insure a risk and what to charge for it. According to Guidewire, hx covers sorting incoming requests for cover, assessing each risk, setting the price and managing the whole book of policies.

Guidewire says insurers have used the software to price more than $75 billion in yearly commercial premium. Its named customers include Aviva, Allianz, Sompo, Beazley, Markel, HDI and Cincinnati Financial.

TechCrunch adds some background. The company was founded in 2017. It says nearly 600 insurers in 40 countries use its software. It raised nearly $90 million before this deal, per PitchBook, from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures.

The two firms already worked together. hyperexponential was a Guidewire PartnerConnect Technology Alliance Partner, which is Guidewire's program for outside software that plugs into its products.

The deal terms

Item	Detail
Base price	$1.7 billion in cash, subject to adjustments
Extra payment	Up to $400 million, tied to recurring revenue targets
Financing	A new $1.0 billion term loan plus cash on hand
Lenders	Bank of America and Citibank
Expected close	Second quarter of Guidewire's fiscal 2027
Advisers	Centerview Partners for Guidewire, J.P. Morgan for hyperexponential

The outlets frame the total differently. TechCrunch says the deal is worth around $2 billion in total. Guidewire and Reinsurance News give the $1.7 billion base plus up to $400 million, which would make $2.1 billion at most. The targets that unlock the extra money were not published.

Why Guidewire wants it

Guidewire says the purchase lets it lead what it calls "agentic underwriting." In that setup, AI agents assess risks and set prices alongside human underwriters and actuaries, the specialists who model insurance risk with statistics.

"We founded hyperexponential on the conviction that underwriting judgment is the highest-leverage work insurers do," said Amrit Santhirasenan, the company's CEO and co-founder.

Guidewire also gave financial goals. It expects the deal to add at least 650 basis points to its annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth in fiscal 2027. A basis point is one hundredth of a percent, so that is 6.5 percentage points. From fiscal 2028, it expects at least 150 basis points of extra organic ARR growth each year.

The company says the deal will not change its guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2027. Updated full-year numbers are due on its December 2026 earnings call. Guidewire did not give a timeline for joining the two products together.

What this means for developers

For insurers and the teams that build and run their systems, this deal changes who controls a key piece of the pricing stack.

• hx customers should ask about the roadmap. Insurers that use hx without Guidewire's core systems will want to know if it stays sold on its own and how long current contracts are honored. Neither company has said.
• Expect tighter links to Guidewire's products. Teams that built their own glue code between hx and Guidewire may see some of it replaced by built-in connections over time. No integration timeline has been given.
• Plan for audits of AI pricing. Agents that suggest prices will have to explain them to underwriters and, in many markets, to insurance regulators. Logging every input and decision is worth designing in now.
• Check your data access. Pricing models are only as good as the policy and claims data they receive. Insurers on older systems may need data cleanup before agentic tools add much.
• Watch the extra $400 million. The payout depends on recurring revenue, so Guidewire has a clear reason to push hx into its existing customer base.

The deal still has to close, and Guidewire's own announcement warns it may not close on time or at all. If it does, Guidewire will own an AI pricing tool that insurers such as Aviva and Allianz already rely on.