Malaysia News: Amazon is reportedly one of several companies interested in buying Slack for over $9 billion

Khamis, 15 Jun 2017

Amazon is reportedly one of several companies interested in buying Slack for over $9 billion

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Amazon is one of several tech companies interested in acquiring the Slack chat platform, according to a Bloomberg report that cites people familiar with the situation.

Slack’s business messaging service has been widely adopted by companies worldwide since it launched in 2013 including the likes of Airbnb, Harvard University, Samsung, and BuzzFeed.

Investors have backed the platform with around $540 million (£423 million), with the company raising $200 million (£157 million) of that last April.

An acquisition deal could value Slack at over $9 billion (£7 billion), Bloomberg’s sources reportedly said, adding that Slack may not accept any of the offers.

Amazon became famous for its ecommerce platform but the company is expanding into an increasing number of fields, from food delivery to cloud storage.

Of the so-called “big five” tech companies in the US, Amazon is the only one without a messaging platform. Apple has iMessage, Facebook has Messenger, Microsoft has Outlook and Teams, and Google has Hangouts

Slack

Slack is free to download and use but it charges companies per user when they want access to special features, such as access to an unlimited communication history, support, and statistics.

The company reportedly has around 5 million daily active users, with 1.5 million of those paying for the service.

Amazon did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.