While there is intense competition among messaging apps in the social space, the most popular and widely employed chatting app in the enterprise setting is definitely Slack. This popularity and growth has enabled the company to garner a lot of attention, which also seems to be the case once again.
Citing sources privy to the company’s developments, Bloomberg today reports that Slack has caught the eye of several tech bigwigs for a potential takeover. There is currently no information on whether the enterprise messaging platform is available on the market for an acquisition but it is said to have received inquires from American e-commerce giant — Amazon.
The sources further mention that the two companies have initiated a dialogue but nothing is assured and discussion may not result in an official agreement. It is highly possible that the talks may not go through and these speculations may just die down right here. We’ve contacted both Amazon and Slack to learn more about these acquisition talks and will update you once we hear back.
The valuation of Slack is, however, being quoted at around $9 billion, which would be way higher than the $3.8 billion valuation at which it last picked up funds. The enterprise messaging giant had last raised a humongous $200 million earlier in April of this year, taking the total capital raised by Slack to around $550 million. This round was led by
Witnessing the success of Slack in the enterprise space, several platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Hangouts Chat, and Flock have spawned up to also attempt to capture a chunk of this market. Microsoft debuted its Slack Slayer, as we like to call it, messaging app called Teams as part of its widely-known Office 365 productivity suite in December last year.
Google, on the other hand, jumped the gun and further added to the chaos which is their messaging stack. It decided it was time to adopt a strategy similar to their consumer-focused apps — Allo and Duo, i.e, splitting them into two different apps. Thus, Hangouts Meet and Chat were birthed, where the latter offers services similar to Slack.
This development has surely surfaced at an interesting time, especially when it is facing increased pressure from its competitors — much like Snapchat, who is being bogged down by Facebook. It will be interesting to witness the direction these buyout talks take from here onwards. Founded back in 2009, Slack now claims to have signed up 5 million daily active users, out of which 1.5 million are paid subscribers. Its annual revenues stood at around $150 million for the previous fiscal year.
