AceBot, a productivity bot for Slack users, announced this week that it has raised $650,000 in seed financing from Accel Partners. According to cofounder and CEO Ravindra Krishnappa, the funding will be used to enhance the bot’s ability to interpret business data and make it useful to users.
AceBot is one of many bots attempting to add features and functionality to Slack. The company claims that AceBot is developing unique “contextual intelligence” capabilities, that will enable it not just to respond to requests, but to interpret the professional context of messages sent by users. For example, a company’s accounting department can use AceBot to log employees’ business-related expenses without having to communicate back-and-forth with them individually. Similarly, HR professionals and other administrators can use AceBot to conduct polls and gather feedback from employees about new company policies or office meal options.
While AceBot launched a mere six months ago, it quickly attracted high-profile clients, ranging from unicorn startups Airbnb and Mailchimp to large enterprise companies like IBM and Oracle.
“Accel was an early investor in Slack and investing in AceBot was a logical next step to help boost team productivity and collaboration,” said Shekhar Kirani, partner at Accel Partners. “Messaging apps have a higher user base in enterprises than social networks.”
Chatbots, especially those connected to the Slack platform, have been gaining traction in the last six to 12 months. NewsCenter has previously reported about Talla, a Slack chatbot that helps users manage to-do lists and due dates. Slack is helping to drive this development: The company has invested $1.97 million to date in 14 chatbot startups.