The News: Salesforce announced an agreement to purchase Airkit.ai, a company that provides code-free, fully customizable AI agents built for omnichannel customer engagement and customer service use cases. Airkit.ai will be folded into Salesforce Service Cloud after the acquisition and will be led by Airkit.ai Cofounder and CEO Adam Evans. The deal is expected to close in the second half of Salesforce’s fiscal year (FY) 2024, but neither the purchase price nor the terms of the deal were disclosed. More information on this acquisition can be found on the Salesforce website.
Salesforce Announces Deal To Buy AI Bot Provider Airkit.ai
Analyst Take: Salesforce announced it has agreed to purchase Airkit.ai, a provider of code-free, customizable AI bots that are built to handle omnichannel customer engagement and customer service applications. The transaction is set to close in the second half of Salesforce’s FY 2024, and the organization will continue to be led by Airkit.ai Cofounder and CEO Adam Evans. Evans previously served as Cofounder and CTO of RelateIQ, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2014 and became a primary part of Sales Cloud Einstein.
Although Salesforce has been highlighting the capabilities and benefits of its Einstein generative AI technology, the acquisition of Airkit.ai’s AI bots is designed to help customers address customer e-commerce inquiries automatically and solve more complex issues rather than deflect simple or repetitive queries. According to Airkit.ai’s website, its AI bots are powered by Chat GPT-4 and can serve customers 24/7, 365 days a year across any digital or voice channel, including webchat, mobile, voice, and email. The AI bots are constructed to answer approximately 90% of customer questions instantly and have been geared to handle e-commerce issues, according to Airkit.ai.
Acquisition Will Provide Full Automation or Agent Assistance
One of the interesting aspects of Airkit.ai’s bots is that they offer two primary operating modes: Co-Pilot and Auto-Pilot. In Co-Pilot mode, an enterprise’s customer service team can utilize bots as an assistant, with the bots providing a detailed summary of the customer inquiry/request, proposing next steps, and drafting suggested communication back to the customer, which can be reviewed, edited, or sent as is.
Meanwhile, in the Auto-Pilot mode, the AI bots act completely autonomously to resolve customers’ issues, and Airkit.ai claims that it can handle more complex inquiries beyond the basic “where is my order” or product knowledge base questions for which chatbots have traditionally been deployed. If the Auto-Pilot autonomous AI bots cannot answer the question or they determines that a human touch is the best approach to handle the issue, the AI bots will escalate the customer to a member of the customer service team and clearly communicate expected next steps to the customer.
Elevating Automation via Smarter Bots
Typically, automated bots used to handle customer support or service inquiries are limited in terms of their ability to understand intent and to provide solutions that go beyond simply pointing the user to other resources. However, this acquisition is likely to provide Salesforce customers with additional options to deploy automation at a higher level. Airkit.ai notes that its specialized e-commerce AI bots can deal with queries about order status, refunds, product information, and other requests involve an order.
From a strategic perspective, it will be interesting to see how these AI bots are positioned, considering the availability of enhanced capabilities offered by Salesforce’s Einstein generative AI offerings, particularly when the AI bots are used in the assistive Co-Pilot mode. In this case, it seems that the Co-Pilot bots might provide similar functions to existing, generative AI features already deployed in Service or Sales Cloud.
Though Salesforce is not disclosing any additional details about the acquisition, the company clearly saw value in the technology and likely will enhance Sales Cloud Einstein’s overall functionality, accuracy, or usability.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
Salesforce Announces Einstein Copilot and Einstein Copilot Studio
Salesforce Q2 FY 2024 Reaches $8.6 Billion, Driven by Data Cloud
Salesforce Einstein 1 Platform Provides Native AI Integration
Adults in the Generative AI Rumpus Room: Salesforce, DeepLearning.ai, Microsoft
Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
