Amazon And Other Tech Giants ‘Eye’ £7bn Slack Acquisition

A number of technology firms, most notably Amazon, are reportedly interested in acquiring workplace communication firm Slack.

Bloomberg says Slack have received a number of enquiries about a takeover, which would value Slack at $9 billion (£7bn), although there is nothing concrete at this stage.

Slack’s rapid growth has not gone unnoticed in Silicon Valley and the firm now have five million daily users, of which 1.5 million are paying, and launched an enterprise version early this year. Last year, it secured £141 million in fresh funding.

Amazon Slack

The platform is free to use, with businesses able to upgrade to ‘premium’ versions that offer more features and support more users. Part of its success can be attributed to the fact that many people use the communication capabilities in their personal lives too, making them more likely to collaborate in a corporate environment.

It has attracted the attention of tech giants who want to integrate with the platform, such as Salesforce and Google, and Microsoft and Facebook which have launched competitors.

Microsoft has launched ‘Teams’ as part of its Office 365 service, while Facebook at Work is being tested in some organisations. Jive and Yammer are other alternatives that cater for the enterprise market.

Amazon has been working to expand its business offerings and expand on the success of its AWS cloud division. For example it could offer software to enterprise customers alongside its infrastructure.

The commerce giant has also been looking at ways of making Amazon Prime more valuable for consumers, such as the acquisition of Twitch.

Amazon had not responded to Silicon’s request for comment at the time of publication, while Slack said it did not comment on rumours or speculation.

Quiz: What do you know about mobile apps?