Salesforce acquires Israeli conversational AI start-up Bonobo

In November 2018, the company announced it had raised $4.5m. in seed funding, led by G20 Ventures and Capri Ventures.

MAY 7, 2019 21:38

(From left) Bonobo.ai co-founders Ohad Hen, Idan Tsitiat, Efrat Rapoport and Barak Goldstein (photo credit: NITZAN GOOR) — (From left) Bonobo.ai co-founders Ohad Hen, Idan Tsitiat, Efrat Rapoport and Barak Goldstein

(photo credit: NITZAN GOOR)

American cloud software giant Salesforce has agreed to acquire Tel Aviv-based conversational intelligence platform Bonobo for between $40 million and $50m.

Bonobo, founded in 2017, uses artificial intelligence to help customer-facing teams centralize fragmented customer interaction data – including voice, chat, video and email – and converts it into accessible insights for upselling, conversion and retention.

While the financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, the San Francisco-headquartered software giant is expected to buy the start-up co-founded by Barak Goldstein, Efrat Rapoport, Idan Tsitiat and Ohad Hen.

To date, the company has analyzed more than one billion interactions, and names businesses including Feedvisor, Dreamcloud, MyHeritage and HoneyBook among its leading customers.

In November 2018, the company announced it had raised $4.5m. in seed funding, led by G20 Ventures and Capri Ventures.

“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,” said Bonobo.

“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.”

Salesforce, founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris, is recognized as a global leader in the field of cloud-based customer relationship management applications. More than 150,000 companies use the company’s platform.

Salesforce recorded a full year revenue ending January 2019 of $13.28 billion, an increase of 26% since last year.