AI Hustle: News on Open AI, ChatGPT, Midjourney, NVIDIA, Anthropic, Open Source LLMs: Salesforce's Game-Changing Move: Acquiring Airkit.ai for AI Customer Service

Welcome to the OpenAI podcast, the podcast that opens up the world of AI in a quick and

concise manner.

Tune in daily to hear the latest news and breakthroughs in the rapidly evolving world

of artificial intelligence.

If you've been following the podcast for a while, you'll know that over the last six

months I've been working on a stealth AI startup.

Of the hundreds of projects I've covered, this is the one that I believe has the greatest

potential.

So today I'm excited to announce AIBOX.

AIBOX is a no-code AI app building platform paired with the App Store for AI that lets

you monetize your AI tools.

The platform lets you build apps by linking together AI models like chatGPT, mid-journey

and 11Labs, eventually will integrate with software like Gmail, Trello and Salesforce

so you can use AI to automate every function in your organization.

To get notified when we launch and be one of the first to build on the platform, you

can join the wait list at AIBOX.AI, the link is in the show notes.

We are currently raising a seed round of funding.

If you're an investor that is focused on disruptive tech, I'd love to tell you more

about the platform.

You can reach out to me at jaden at AIBOX.AI, I'll leave that email in the show notes.

In what I view as a fairly significant move deepening its kind of direction into AI and

customer service, Salesforce recently announced, like I mentioned, that they're going to be

acquiring this AirKit.AI, which is really a platform specializing in enabling e-commerce

businesses to create AI enhanced customer service agents.

I think the financial details around this whole acquisition, they have not released

yet, but for people unfamiliar with our kit's trajectory, this is a Redwood City, California

based company, and it was actually founded back in 2017 by two people, Adam Evans and

Stefan Ekien.

Those that are unfamiliar with the names, those are names in the Salesforce ecosystem.

They previously actually took their big data venture, which was called Riltel Q, and that

was actually purchased in the past by Salesforce for around $390 million back in 2014.

It's interesting because this is two guys, they created a software company, sold it to

Salesforce for $390 million, now they've started another software company, and again, they're

selling it to Salesforce.

That's funny, right?

Salesforce maybe just uses them as a little startup incubator to feed them great companies,

but yeah, well played by them, double startups, double acquisitions, both by Salesforce, so

very dynamic duo for sure.

In any case, originally AirKit emerged as a self-serve customer engagement solution,

which was aiming to bridge the often problematic data silos for businesses and streamlining

processes like user onboarding, among other things, so fast forward to last month and

the platform underwent a significant pivot, so rebranding as AirKit.ai, the firm unveiled

its pioneering product, which is a platform powered by GPT-4, and this innovation empowers

companies including names like OpenTable and ShipBob to craft highly specialized customer

service chatbots.

So these bots are proficient in handling a whole bunch of tasks from, you know, outdated

order statuses and processing refunds to providing detailed product insights.

But just to go back a little bit and give you kind of the full picture on this, back

in 2020, so AirKit.ai actually raised $28 million from a cell who obviously, you know,

top US venture capital firm and Salesforce ventures, and that's kind of when they launched

this thing.

So, you know, Salesforce, while they're buying them today, they've actually, you know, previously

were investing in a round that raised $28 million, and I think the subsequent investment

rounds saw the startup receive around a total of $68 million during over the course of its

six years.

It really kind of cemented its ties with Salesforce when AirKit got its platform listed

on Salesforce's Enterprise Cloud Marketplace.

They're kind of like app exchange last year.

So I think it's really hard to overlook, you know, really this kind of a mounting excitement

around generative AI platforms like ChatGPT.

I think investors are definitely in a bit of a frenzy to kind of find and fund the next

standout venture in this arena.

They know that a lot of different areas in the economy are struggling and AI right now

is kind of one of the silver linings that seems to just keep growing.

So I think given this backdrop, it's not very surprising that a generative AI enterprise

with some really deep rooted connections to Salesforce is going to kind of peak their

interest.

I think that this sentiment is really kind of accented by Salesforce's recent commitment

to invest around $500 million in generative AI startups.

I'd be really curious, you know, what they ended up actually buying AirKit for.

It had already received around $68 million in funding.

They're planning on investing $500 million.

So this is, you know, obviously coming out of that.

But yeah, I'd just be really curious to hear what the deal terms are.

In any case, as really the business community is waiting keenly for the deal's kind of culmination

to see what's happening, which is anticipated by to really kind of this whole thing's supposed

to close by January of 2024.

Salesforce has charted out that they're very interested in this and AirKit.ai is slated

to kind of blend into Salesforce's established customer service platform, which is called

Service Cloud.

So they're kind of getting directly integrated.

And I think in a nod to its expertise and leadership, Evans will retain the reins and

continue to lead the business's future endeavors.

So just because it's getting acquired doesn't mean, you know, the whole company's getting

dissolved or whatnot and just kind of absorbed.

But you know, Evans is going to continue to run it as he's been currently doing.

I think for Salesforce and the broader AI community, this acquisition kind of signals

more than a business transaction, it's kind of, you know, showing the growing importance

of integrating cutting edge AI capabilities into reshaping customer service for the digital

age.

I also think this is a really good lesson for founders and for the enterprise to kind

of see some of the ways that partnerships and some of the value that partnerships play,

right?

Obviously, this is a company that was heavily invested in by Salesforce and then heavily

integrated into what Salesforce was doing.

And then it kind of got to the point where Salesforce was like, Hey, well, you know,

we love what you're doing.

We're already integrated.

We've been with you for a number of years.

I mean, they'd even bought a previous company from the founders.

And so at that point, they just decided to do a straight up acquisition and kind of bring

them under Salesforce's umbrella.

So really interesting lesson here.

And I'm going to be curious to see if we see a lot more of that as a lot of AI companies

right now are building partnerships and getting investment from a lot of big software companies.

It'll be interesting to see how that continues to play out in the future.

If you are looking for an innovative and creative community of people using chat GPT, you need

to join our chat GPT creators community.

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It's a lot easier than a podcast as you can see screenshots, you can share and comment

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So if this sounds interesting to you, check out the link in the comment.

We'd love to have you in the community.

Thanks for joining me on the open AI podcast.

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podcasts and I'll see you tomorrow.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.