I tracked 13,969 independent US vet practices and mapped each one to its likely PE acquirer — here's what the data shows

The US veterinary market is in the middle of one of the most aggressive private equity rollups of the decade. ~25% of US vet practices are now corporate-owned, up from ~10% in 2017. Five buyer groups drive 80% of dealflow — and most independent practice owners don't know it yet.

For PE associates, search funds, and corp dev teams hunting acquisition targets in this vertical, the bottleneck is the same one every M&A team hits: finding the right targets at the right time.

Grata, the incumbent for generic M&A target sourcing, charges $50K–$150K/year for a database that covers every industry. For a vet-vertical PE rollup that's 90% features you don't use, at 5x the price.

So I built a vertical-specific alternative. This article walks through the data, the methodology, and what 30 days of running it across all 50 US states surfaced.

What I scraped

Source: OpenStreetMap Overpass API (the amenity=veterinary tag), federated across all 50 US states + DC via per-state bounding-box queries.

Yield: 13,969 independent US vet practices, scored 1-10 on M&A readiness, mapped to their most likely PE acquirer.

Cost: ~$510 for a full 50-state scan, ~8 minutes runtime. (Compare to Grata's $50K-$150K/year.)

Stack: TypeScript + Crawlee + zod, deployed as an Apify Actor with pay-per-event pricing.

The 5 PE buyer groups (and how to spot their targets)

The actor classifies each independent practice against five known acquirer playbooks:

These five groups are responsible for ~80% of US vet practice acquisitions. The actor uses public signals (chain status, name pattern, opening hours, multi-vet indicators, location tier) to predict which of them is most likely to bid on a given independent practice.

What 30 days of scanning revealed

A few patterns that surprised me:

1. The chains are not where most of the dealflow is.
Independent practices outnumber chain-owned 3 to 1, despite the consolidation narrative. The acquisition runway is still enormous — there are ~14K independent US vet practices left, and PE groups are buying ~500–800/year. That's a 17-year horizon at current pace.

2. Regional rollups are eating the suburbs while everyone watches the chains.
Innovetive Petcare, Pathway Vet Alliance, Thrive Pet Healthcare, Compassion First, MedVet, and Vetnique together have closed more deals in the last 24 months than NVA or VetCor individually. They get less press because they don't have JAB or Oak Hill name recognition, but they're competitive on price.

3. The "qualified target" signal (score ≥ 7) requires state-portal enrichment.
Pure OpenStreetMap data scores most practices in the 4-6 range (borderline). To get into the 7-10 qualified range — which is what PE associates actually pay attention to — you need state-portal data (LLC formation date, registered agent, ownership age). I have a separate paid-enrichment path that hits state veterinary licensing boards, but it requires Cloudflare bypass for some states and is opt-in due to cost.

4. PE-buying-veterinary is a controversial public topic.
Google Autocomplete shows queries like "private equity veterinary tucker carlson", "private equity veterinary care concerns", and "private equity owned veterinary clinics" trending. The public is starting to notice. For PE associates, this matters because public scrutiny → regulatory risk → deal friction. The actor flags chain-acquired clinics specifically so you don't accidentally pitch a practice that's already corporate.

The M&A readiness score (1-10)

Each independent practice gets a 1-10 score based on:

• Is it in a chain (auto-exclude)
• Website presence + freshness
• Multi-vet indicators (opening hours, staff)
• Metro tier (top-25, top-50, suburban, rural)
• Name pattern (single-owner branded vs neutral)
• Optional enrichment: state portal LLC age, reviews, AVMA membership

Scoring is intentionally conservative. Practices that score 7+ are the ones where I'd actually pick up the phone. Practices that score 4-6 are "track quarterly" candidates — the kind that age into qualification over 18-36 months.

Why this matters for PE associates and search funds

If you're sourcing for a vet-vertical fund or running a search-fund thesis on independent vet practices, the math is straightforward:

• Grata: $50K-$150K/year, generic everything, weeks to onboard, manual buyer mapping
• This actor: $510 for a full USA scan, vet-vertical native, 8 minutes runtime, automated buyer mapping

The actor doesn't replace your sourcing team — it replaces the bulk-list-building step so your team can spend their time on the next step (qualification calls, owner outreach, deal triage).

How to run it yourself

The actor is live on Apify Store. Pricing is pay-per-event:

• $0.20/borderline target (score 4-6, OSM-only)
• $1.00/qualified target (score 7+, fully enriched)
• $5.00/state scan (covers infrastructure per state)

You set the states, the max per state, the minimum readiness threshold, and optionally a buyer filter (NVA-fit only, VetCor-fit only, etc). Output is JSON/CSV/Excel.

→ Run the actor on Apify Store

What I'm working on next

• State-portal enrichment for 50/50 states (currently 5/50 fully verified via Cloudflare bypass)
• Acquisition-timing signal (LLC formation age + owner age proxy via website domain WHOIS)
• API endpoint for CRM integration (push qualified targets straight to HubSpot/Salesforce)

If you're in vet-vertical PE or running a search fund thesis, I'd love feedback on what the next 6 months of this should look like. Open an issue on the actor page or hit me up.

Built with Apify (pay-per-event actor platform), OpenStreetMap Overpass API, and a lot of Crawlee retry logic. Full README + input/output schemas at apify.com/kazkn/vet-mna-actor.