US software giant Salesforce announced this afternoon that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Israeli conversational intelligence platform company Bonobo.ai. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but sources close to Salesforce say that the company is expected to pay between $40 million to $50 million for the Israeli startup.
Tel Aviv-based Bonobo.ai raised its seed round of $4.5 million six months ago, led by G20 Ventures with Capri Ventures.
Bonobo.ai was founded in 2017 by CEO Efrat Rapoport, Barak Goldstein, Idan Tsitiat and Ohad Hen. The company has assembled a team of alumni from IDF elite technological units specializing in AI. Bonob.ai's 20 employees will join Salesforce's Tel Aviv office.
A blog post on Bonobo.ai's website says, "Today we are beyond excited to announce that Salesforce, the global CRM leader, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bonobo.ai."
"Salesforce’s acquisition of bonobo.ai will allow us to expand upon on our vision - driving the conversational intelligence revolution and helping companies know their customers like never before."
"With Bonobo.ai, companies turn customer conversations into meaningful insights which power sales, customer satisfaction and retention. Bonobo.ai enables companies to analyze customer interactions, empowering sales teams to spot trends, improve conversations and drive customer success."
"Bonobo.ai will enhance the power of Salesforce Sales Cloud by leveraging conversational intelligence within the Salesforce Platform, allowing companies to utilize one of their most valuable sources of data - customer interactions."
"We would like to deeply thank our employees, customers, investors and everyone that contributed to our success. We are thrilled to become part of the amazing Salesforce family and continue to the next phase of our journey."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 6, 2019
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