GMO Internet is shifting its M&A strategy from complementing advertising functions to integrating infrastructure and advertising. While strengthening its overseas expansion, the company aims to expand growth areas by leveraging existing assets through investment in generative AI and GPU cloud services.
GMO Internet's M&A began in 2011, when it was still known as GMO Ad Partners, with the acquisition of a mobile advertising agency business. It subsequently acquired shares in Searchteria, made it a consolidated subsidiary, acquired shares in Innovators and made China Concierge a subsidiary, among other transactions. The scope expanded toward complementing peripheral functions in the advertising field and evolved into a model incorporating both customer touchpoints and technology. The backdrop was accelerating digitalisation, and the company used M&A to supplement areas that were difficult to address through the conventional advertising-agency function alone.
The acquisition of Adcloud in 2015 marked a turning point, bringing in a system for providing an advertising delivery platform through the cloud. Subsequently, GMO Mobile, GMO Ad Marketing and Adcloud were integrated to strengthen coordination between technological and sales capabilities. This accelerated the policy of maximising the integration process of “buying companies,” “bringing in technology,” “combining it with existing businesses” and “creating new products.”
The biggest turning point came with the January 2025 reorganisation, under which the advertising and media business was transferred to GMO Ad Partners and the company shifted to a structure directly responsible for the infrastructure business. This changed the M&A strategy to “infrastructure plus advertising and media” and established a foundation for cross-selling using recurring-use services such as domains, cloud services and rental servers. In 2025, the company expanded overseas by acquiring shares in 8 overseas companies and making 11 companies subsidiaries, although there were also cases in which it decided to withdraw, and assessing the overall success will take time. In addition, in 2026 it invested ¥3.2 billion in Turing, a company developing fully autonomous driving AI, and signed a 4-year GPU cloud contract. Through “partnership-building” involving equity investments, long-term contracts and technology sharing, the company is pursuing a strategy to strengthen connections across the AI, GPU, data and marketing fields.
Going forward, the company has indicated a policy of dynamically reviewing which businesses and areas each group company should hold, as business portfolio realignment through parent-subsidiary cooperation proceeds. There is a view that the company will shift the focus of its M&A toward strengthening the ecosystem by combining not only external M&A but also intra-group transfers, capital alliances and business sales. The speed of post-acquisition integration and withdrawal is expected to determine GMO Internet's future success or failure.