No stranger to significant acquisitions, Facebook has announced the purchase of yet another company, Kustomer. The startup was founded in 2015 by Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel – the same duo that founded customer support and ticketing platform Assistly (Desk.com) – which Salesforce acquired in 2011.

With the new acquisition, new little robots should soon start appearing on Facebook, as the expectation is that Kustomer's artificial intelligence chatbot will help to increase the e-commerce services that the company provides.

As is customary, the social network led by Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the transaction – which still needs to be approved by regulatory agencies – but refused to reveal the terms. However, American analysts estimate that it was necessary to pay around 1 billion dollars.

Kustomer

As for the future of Kustomer, it seems that Facebook will maintain its 'essence' but should expand its users. In a post on its official blog, the company stated that "we plan to support Kustomer's operations by providing the resources necessary to grow its business, improve and innovate its product offering, and continue to delight its customers."

Regarding the partnership with Facebook, Brad Birnbaum, who is the CEO of Kustomer, said that with FB’s resources, they will be able to help more people benefit from faster customer service. In his words, a service that “is available when and how they need it via phone, email, text, web chat or messaging.”

The acquisition comes as Mark Zuckerberg's social network continues to incorporate e-commerce into its offerings, most notably on its messaging services WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as Instagram, of course.

The company recently launched a feature called Stores, which allows merchants to turn their Facebook and Instagram pages into online stores. The company also redesigned Instagram's main interface to add the Guides.

Lots of shopping, lots of problems

In just 16 years, Facebook has acquired over 100 companies, including several startups. The most notable acquisitions were Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 – which had a profound impact on the digital world.

Recently, these two services have put the company in the spotlight from the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which initiated antitrust investigations about the company – as well as Apple, Amazon and Google – at the beginning of the year.

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