Facebook To Acquire Customer Service Chat Startup Kustomer

The terms of the acquisition, which still has to be approved by regulators, weren’t disclosed, but the Wall Street Journal reported the deal values Kustomer at a little more than $1 billion.

Kustomer pulls interactions from a single customer on different platforms, such as text or email, into a single screen.

Facebook said it decided to make the acquisition after it noticed an increase in customers using WhatsApp and other text services to contact businesses, and plans to provide resources for Kustomer “to scale its business, improve and innovate its product offering and delight its customers.”

Kustomer was founded in 2015 and has raised $173.5 million from Tiger Global Management, Coatue, Battery Ventures, Redpoint, Canaan Partners, Social Leverage and Cisco Investments, according to Crunchbase.

Facebook said it will continue to support other customer relationship management programs that integrate into its messaging services.