11 Best M&A Advisory Firms in Seattle (2026)

Seattle is the largest metro on the West Coast without a single bulge-bracket or major mid-market investment bank keeping a staffed M&A desk in the city. That is not a knock on the market. Boeing's supply chain, Microsoft and Amazon's alumni network, and a deep bench of venture-backed technology exits have produced a genuine, if thin, roster of independent Seattle boutiques and business brokerages who run real sell-side processes every year. It is a knock on how most "best M&A advisor" lists get built, because a fair number of the firms that show up in a Seattle search are national brands running a landing page with a Seattle city name in the URL and no one on the ground.

This guide only includes firms we could verify, on the firm's own website as of September 2026, as headquartered or otherwise based somewhere in the Seattle metro, which we treat as King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Where a firm publishes a street address, we cite it; where the only evidence is a self-description as a Seattle-based firm or a Seattle-area phone number, we say exactly that rather than imply a specific office. We found 11 that cleared that bar. We looked at several more that did not, and we say exactly why below rather than pad the count. For general lower middle market fee and process benchmarks, see our guide to M&A advisors for lower middle market sellers. To see where your business might land on an indicative multiple, use the business valuation calculator.

How we verified this list

We used four inclusion filters, applied to each firm's own website as of September 2026:

1. Headquartered or otherwise based in the Seattle metro (King, Snohomish, or Pierce county), confirmed by a street address, a Seattle-area phone number, or an explicit self-description on the firm's own site, not a third-party directory listing alone. We note which type of evidence applies to each firm.
2. Sell-side M&A advisory or business brokerage as a core, current service, not a defunct practice or a parked domain.
3. A named team, founder, or clear operating history visible on the site, so the firm is a real operating business rather than a placeholder page.
4. Active in 2026, meaning the domain resolves, the site has current content, and (where stated) a recent transaction or announcement.

We explicitly excluded, and say why: William & Wall and Parkland Capital Partners, both of which told us on their own sites that they serve Washington remotely from Scottsdale, Arizona and Dallas, Texas respectively, with no staffed Seattle office; Cornerstone Business Services, headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin with no Seattle office mentioned; Harris Northwest Advisors, whose domain now redirects to a GoDaddy for-sale parked page; and Exvere Inc, whose website is offline (Liberty Ridge Advisors' own site states its co-founders previously worked at Exvere, suggesting succession rather than continued independent operation). We could not verify a staffed Seattle investment-banking office, on the firm's own site, for Houlihan Lokey, William Blair, Harris Williams, Robert W. Baird (whose Seattle page describes wealth management only), D.A. Davidson, or FOCUS Investment Banking, so none of them appear in the ranked list; we discuss all of them in the honest tier above this band.

This guide draws sector and deal-flow context from the ProCloser Tech & SaaS M&A Deal Index, a tracked set of 1,740 announced 2026 technology and SaaS transactions, alongside U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro and Washington State Department of Commerce industry data, both cited with sources below.

Quick comparison: all 11 firms at a glance

Deal size ranges reflect what each firm publishes or what its named transactions suggest. Where a firm has not published a figure, we say so rather than estimate one.

Which Seattle advisor fits my deal?

Seattle's metro economy is not one thing. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area puts total nonfarm employment at 2,152,900 as of August 2026, led by professional and business services at 387,700 jobs, trade, transportation, and utilities at 353,200, education and health services at 315,500, manufacturing at 168,500 (up 2.9 percent year over year), and information (which includes software) at 132,500. The Washington State Department of Commerce names aerospace, technology, life sciences, clean energy, and maritime among the state's core strength sectors. Route your advisor search off which of those your business sits in, not off the word "Seattle" alone.

Seattle's established sell-side firms ($10M-$100M+ EV)

These are the three Seattle-headquartered firms with the longest published track records and the broadest sector coverage. None of the three published a specific minimum deal size on the pages we reviewed, so ask directly before assuming fit.

Lower middle market specialists ($2M-$100M EV)

These four firms publish, or clearly imply through named transactions, a lower middle market focus roughly between $2 million and $100 million in enterprise value, sitting below Cascadia Capital and Alexander Hutton's apparent range and above the business-broker tier.

Business brokers for owner-operated Seattle businesses (under $2M-$5M)

These four firms run success-fee, or largely success-fee, business brokerage models built for main-street and small lower-middle-market sales rather than sponsor-backed competitive auctions.

What 2026 deal data shows for Seattle-area companies

We searched the ProCloser Tech & SaaS M&A Deal Index, 1,740 tracked 2026 transactions, across target, acquirer, and summary text for Seattle and its metro suburbs. That search returned 4 matches, and we are stating that sample size plainly because it is small and the index's tech-and-SaaS, public-announcement scope is the reason, not a signal about overall Seattle M&A activity.

• Seismic's merger with Highspot (announced August 18, 2026): Highspot is a Seattle-based sales enablement software company; the announcement stated Seattle would remain an R&D location for the combined company. No advisor was credited in our source.
• McGraw Hill's acquisition of Teachally (announced September 2, 2026): an AI startup for teachers described in our source as led by a "Seattle tech vet," Daniel Bernstein. Hemisphere Partners was credited as sell-side advisor.
• Clarify's acquisition of Seam AI (announced July 21, 2026): our source describes the acquirer, Clarify, as "Seattle's Clarify," making this a case of a Seattle company acting as the buyer rather than the target. No advisor was credited.
• Avalara's acquisition of Versori (announced March 2, 2026): Avalara maintains a Seattle office at 906 Alaskan Way, confirmed on its own site, and acted as acquirer of Versori, an AI-driven integration platform. No advisor was credited.

What this small sample can responsibly support: Seattle technology companies show up on both sides of the table, as acquisition targets and as active acquirers, and named sell-side advisor credit is rare across our tracked deals generally, not specific to Seattle. What it cannot support is any claim about total Seattle-area deal volume, since Washington State recorded far more business ownership transitions across all sectors and sizes in 2026 than four; our index was simply never built to count private, sub-$100M sales with no public announcement, which is most of what the firms on this page do. See the ProCloser deal insights dashboard and the most active tech acquirers of 2026 for the national picture this data does support.

The honest tier below this band

If your business does under roughly $500,000 in annual revenue or you are selling a solo-operator service business with minimal transferable assets, a retained advisor of any kind, business broker included, is usually not economical for you. Online marketplaces such as Acquire.com, Flippa and BizBuySell let you list directly to a buyer pool without a retainer or a percentage-of-sale success fee structured for a $1M-plus deal. You take on more of the marketing and negotiation work yourself, and buyer quality is more variable, but for a very small business the trade-off usually favors doing it yourself or with light-touch help rather than paying full brokerage fees on a small sale price.

The honest tier above this band

Above roughly $75 million to $100 million enterprise value, Seattle sellers typically move into territory served by mid-market and bulge-bracket banks, and it is worth being direct about what we found as of September 2026: none of them keep a staffed M&A office in the city. William Blair's own locations page lists offices including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Stamford, with no Seattle listing. Harris Williams' own about page lists Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, New York, Richmond, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., again with no Seattle office. Robert W. Baird does have a Seattle office at 925 4th Avenue, but its own Seattle page describes only private wealth management teams, not investment banking staff. FOCUS Investment Banking covers Washington state from its Washington D.C., Atlanta and Los Angeles offices rather than a local desk. We could not get a readable response from Houlihan Lokey's own office pages as of September 2026, and independent business directories place its offices in major markets that do not appear to include Seattle, though we were not able to confirm that gap on the firm's own site.

The practical implication: a Seattle founder with a mandate large enough to interest one of these firms should expect a banker who travels to Seattle for meetings rather than one who already has a local office, and should not treat "no dedicated Seattle team" as disqualifying, since these firms run national and global processes regardless of banker location. What it does mean is that the in-person, drop-in-the-office relationship a local boutique offers is not something these larger banks can match here.

Indicative 2026 valuation ranges by sector

These ranges are drawn from our sitewide EBITDA multiples by industry data, mapped to the sectors that dominate Seattle's metro economy per the routing table above. They are indicative lower-middle-market ranges, not a valuation of your specific business.

What do these advisors charge in 2026?

Fee data compiled from the Firmex/Axial M&A Fee Guide and cross-checked against the specific structures published by firms on this list, including IBA's stated 100 percent performance model and Parkland Capital Partners' published 3 to 8 percent declining success-fee scale.

The frames we use in this guide

• The No-Desk Rule: no top-tier investment bank keeps a banker physically stationed in Seattle. If a firm claims otherwise, ask for the name of a specific Seattle-based managing director, not a mailing address.
• The Network Pass-Through Test: for a firm that is a local office of a larger network, such as Alexander Hutton's reported Oaklins affiliation, ask whether your deal is staffed and billed entirely by the local team or shared with another member firm on a cross-border introduction.
• The Boeing Concentration Discount: aerospace-supply manufacturers with more than roughly 30 to 40 percent of revenue tied to a single OEM should expect buyers to price that concentration into the offer through a lower multiple, an earnout, or both, and should ask any advisor how they plan to address it in the CIM before diligence surfaces it.
• The Success-Fee-Only Ceiling: a 100 percent performance-fee brokerage model, common among Seattle business brokers under roughly $5 million in enterprise value, tends to stop making economic sense for the advisor above that range, because the diligence workload scales with deal size but the model does not flex to compensate for it.
• The Severance-to-Seller Pipeline: repeated large tech-employer layoffs in the Seattle metro have produced a steady stream of laid-off engineers and operators selling side businesses and consultancies in the $1 million to $5 million range, a seller profile better served by a business broker than by a lower middle market bank, despite the seller's technology background.

How to verify a Seattle advisor is legit and unconflicted

Most of the firms on this list did not publish FINRA registration or CRD information on the pages we reviewed; Cascadia Capital is the exception, stating "Member FINRA/SIPC" directly. That is not automatically disqualifying, since a large share of lower middle market M&A advisory work, particularly business brokerage on asset or equity sales structured to fit within the SEC's M&A broker exemption under Securities Exchange Act Rule 15(b)(13), does not require broker-dealer registration. It does mean you should verify independently rather than assume. Search any firm and its named principals on FINRA BrokerCheck directly; a firm that is registered will show a CRD number there even if it does not print one on its own site. Ask every advisor you meet, business broker or investment bank, for three references from transactions closed in the last 24 months in a comparable size and sector to yours, and ask specifically whether they or any principal has any disciplinary history, an active conflict such as an undisclosed referral fee from a buyer, or a pending engagement with a company that directly competes with yours.

The traps in a "best Seattle M&A advisor" list

Four traps showed up repeatedly while building this list, and they are worth naming so you can spot them elsewhere. First, national brands running a city-specific landing page with no staffed local office, which is exactly what we found with William & Wall and Parkland Capital Partners; a page that says "Seattle" in the URL is not the same as a Seattle team. Second, expired or defunct firms still appearing in aggregator directories, which is what happened with Harris Northwest Advisors, whose domain now points to a parked page, and Exvere Inc, whose website is offline. Third, aggregate lifetime statistics presented without dates or a denominator, such as "230-plus transactions" or "over 75 years of experience," which are real credentials but tell you little about current activity without a recent, dated, named transaction to back them up. Fourth, network-affiliated boutiques presented as fully independent local firms, which appears to be the case with Alexander Hutton's reported Oaklins membership; that affiliation can be a genuine benefit, but it changes who else may be involved in your deal and deserves a direct question before you sign.

Where ProCloser fits

ProCloser is not an M&A advisor, a business broker, or a party to any transaction. We built this list by checking each firm's own website as of September 2026 against four inclusion filters and by naming, plainly, the firms and networks we could not verify or chose to exclude and why. ProCloser operates a free matching service that connects Seattle-area business owners to vetted advisory firms based on deal size, sector, and buyer type, and we may be compensated by advisory firms when a match results in an engagement; that compensation never determines which firms appear on this list or in what order.

The bottom line

Route on deal size first. Above roughly $10 million enterprise value, start with Cascadia Capital, Alexander Hutton, or Zachary Scott. Between $2 million and $25 million, Chinook Capital Advisors, Concord Ventures, Liberty Ridge Advisors, and Tullius Partners cover manufacturing, aerospace, technology and general services. Under roughly $2 million to $5 million, IBA, Murphy Business, Exit Equity, and Freeman Lundt run success-fee business brokerage processes built for owner-operated sales. Above roughly $75 million to $100 million, expect a banker who flies in, since no major bank keeps a staffed Seattle M&A office as of as of September 2026. And verify everything directly. Several firms that show up in a casual Seattle search, including two well-known regional names, did not survive a basic check of their own website as of September 2026.

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