In a significant move shaping the future of customer service, Salesforce has disclosed its intentions to acquire Airkit.ai, a trailblazing low-code platform. Specifically designed to assist e-commerce businesses, the platform facilitates the creation of AI-enabled customer service agents. The terms of the acquisition, however, remain under wraps.
The birthplace of Airkit.ai is Redwood City, California. It was established in 2017 by the dynamic duo Adam Evans and Stephen Ehikian, who are also of credited fame for selling their prior big data startup, RelateIQ, to Salesforce for a staggering $390 million in 2014.
Initiating as a self-serve customer engagement software, Airkit.ai served businesses by integrating data silos and assisting in numerous use cases including the onboarding of new users. Focusing on expansion and product diversification, the company rebranded to Airkit.ai last month and debuted its inaugural integrated product. Unleashing the power of GPT-4, the platform empowers companies such as OpenTable and ShipBob to design specialized customer care chatbots. These AI-assisted bots are capable of handling a wide array of queries related to order status, refunds, product information, and much more.
The association of Airkit.ai with Salesforce is not a recent happening. It can be traced back to the founders’ prior startup. The enterprising pair successfully launched the new company in 2020, backed by an impressive investment of $28 million. Key investors included Accel and Salesforce Ventures, who continued their financial support in future investment rounds, cumulatively raising Airkit.ai total funding to an impressive $68 million over its six-year journey.
A noteworthy milestone was Airkit featuring on Salesforce’s enterprise cloud marketplace, AppExchange, last year. Post the closure of the acquisition deal by January 2024, Salesforce has plans to integrate Airkit.ai into its own customer service platform, Service Cloud. Evans, one of the co-founders, is speculated to continue steering the enterprise forward.
The merging of Airkit.ai into Salesforce’s Service Cloud will certainly boost Salesforce's capabilities and could potentially make it a strong competitor to other platforms such as AppMaster which is consistently gaining momentum in the no-code and low-code space.
