Dive Brief:
- Atlassian plans to acquire video messaging platform Loom for approximately $975 million, according to a Thursday announcement by the collaboration software provider.
- The purchase is expected to conclude in Q3 of Atlassian’s fiscal year 2024, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval.
- Loom will remain available as a separate product, but Atlassian plans to integrate the tech across its suite of tools after the acquisition closes, according to the announcement.
Dive Insight:
The acquisition of Loom embeds another mode of communication — video — to Atlassian's tool kit. Among other use case examples, the integration will allow engineers to visually log issues in Jira, and HR teams can onboard new employees using personalized videos.
Atlassian is no stranger to adding services through acquisitions. In 2019, the company bought enterprise agile planning software company AgileCraft for nearly $166 million. Atlassian later acquired Chartio and ThinkTilt in 2021 and Percept.AI in 2022.
It’s part of an integration strategy geared at enterprise customers. Atlassian’s sales to enterprise customers grew over 50% year-over-year in its fiscal year 2023, the company said in August.
Atlassian team members have used Loom’s technology since 2016, serving as the go-to communication tool amid a transition to a fully distributed model, according to a spokesperson. Loom has 25 million users globally who record nearly 5 million videos per month.
The addition comes after some of the biggest changes to Atlassian’s platform. In April, the company added generative AI features to services and project work, letting customers use OpenAI’s technology to summarize decisions after meetings, draft social media copy or define test plans for product updates in Jira.
While it’s not clear yet how Loom’s technology will look within Atlassian's interface, the company sees the tool as a vehicle for asynchronous instruction to sit side-by-side spreadsheets, presentations and text.
“By integrating Atlassian’s and Loom’s investments in AI, customers will be able to seamlessly transition between video, transcripts, summaries, documents, and the workflows derived from them,” Atlassian Co-founders and Co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar said in the announcement.
