Customer relationship management giant Salesforce announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Airkit.ai, a startup that develops AI-powered customer service applications.
With the acquisition, Salesforce aims to strengthen its customer service offering by integrating Airkit.ai's technology into its Service Cloud platform. Airkit.ai has built a suite of omni-channel customer engagement tools and AI customer service agents that allow companies to offer flexible, automated support across channels like chat, SMS and voice.
"The future of customer engagement will be powered by a new set of AI-driven customer experiences," said Bill Patterson, EVP and GM of Customer 360 Applications at Salesforce, in a statement. "Adam and team have a strong understanding of the Customer 360 Platform and are some of the best technologists we have worked with in helping Salesforce customers connect with their own customers in a whole new way."
This marks a reunion between Salesforce and Airkit.ai's co-founder and CTO Adam Evans. Evans previously founded RelateIQ, an AI-powered sales automation tool acquired by Salesforce in 2014 that became part of Sales Cloud Einstein.
With Airkit's conversational AI capabilities and Salesforce's customer data platform, the combined company aims to enable smarter, more personalized customer experiences across sales, service, marketing and e-commerce.
"In the world of Generative AI, it’s clear we need new types of experiences that provide opportunities to transform the engagement experience," said Evans. "At Airkit.ai, we’ve been doing this since our inception, and view Salesforce, the customer company, as a perfect fit for Airkit.ai, the experience company."
Salesforce did not disclose the terms of the acquisition. Airkit.ai will continue to be led by Evans under Service Cloud once the deal closes, which is expected in the second half of Salesforce's 2024 fiscal year pending regulatory approvals.
The purchase of Airkit.ai comes as Salesforce looks to expand its AI and automation capabilities across its platform. The company has made a series of acquisitions and investments in recently aimed at augmenting its services with next-generation technologies like AI, voice and vision.