Amazon Inks Deal To Buy Chatbot Company Angel.ai

Amazon has reportedly inked a deal to acquire Angel.ai, a chatbot technology company, for an undisclosed sum.

According to a report by TechCrunch, Amazon confirmed Angel.ai Cofounder and CEO Navid Hadzaad has joined Amazon. “I can confirm that Navid started at Amazon, and that his first day was yesterday. We don’t have anything further to share at this time,” an Amazon spokesperson said in the report. What’s more, a check by TechCrunch on LinkedIn confirmed Hadzaad has a new job title: “Head of New Bot Products at Amazon.” The report noted that several other Angel.ai employees are joining Amazon or have offers from Amazon on the table. The report noted Amazon is also acquiring some or all of Angel.ai’s technology and data.

Angel.ai raised $8 million in a Series A round of funding last July, which was led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Lakestar, Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures and Cherry Ventures. Angel.ai was originally named GoButler, starting out as a virtual assistant that let consumers request anything on-demand. It has pivoted a few times since then and now offers natural language processing technology to third parties. The report noted that Amazon appears to be buying the chatbot expertise as it attempts to determine what role or place bots will play in the so-called conversational commerce market.

Over the past week, bots have been growing in popularity and are joining the fashion industry at runway events, delivering pizza without hopping off Facebook and peeking through in cloud technology. Experts say chatbots prove that we’ve reached a stage in engagement between AI and human interaction that is prime for allowing businesses to leverage technology in an inexpensive way to reach more consumers.