Dive Brief:
- Using its venture capital fund, Slack has invested an unspecified amount in a Canadian chatbot company, according to a Business Insider report.
- Automat mixes messaging, artificial intelligence and chatbots to help brands talk with customers. According to the company's website, Automat has 17 patents in areas of speech recognition, natural language, virtual assistants and AI.
- Automat was co-founded in January by Andy Mauro who formerly worked at Nuance Communications as the senior director of the "cognitive innovations group," Business Insider reported.
Dive Insight:
In December, Slack launched its own $80 million VC fund and app store, intended to bolster its platform and expand its share of the workplace communication market. As it continues to grow, Slack will look to help the messaging market grow, potentially employing their technology to expand their services.
Slack is one of only a few companies that has made any headway in the interoffice messaging space. The company now touts 3 million users active daily, with 2 million connected simultaneously.
Though Slack already integrates chatbots into its offering, more solutions that capitalize on AI technology could help the platform better anticipate user needs, setting the company apart from its competitors in the space.
Automat marks Slack's fourth VC investment to date. Previously the company invested in Howdy, an app that runs teams' status update meetings; Small Wins, a productivity startup; and Awesome, an app that automates workflows and provides Slack chat summaries.
