Facebook Buys Israeli Enterprise Messaging Company Redkix to Enhance Workplace by Facebook

Facebook has acquired Redkix, an email startup that combines email, messaging and calendar features into one app. Redkix will be joining the Workplace by Facebook team.

The social networking platform did not declare the details of the deal, but a source close to the transaction told news agency Reuters the value of the deal was less than $100 million. Redkix raised $20 million in seed round from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Wicklow Capital and SG VC as well as angel investors Oren Ze’ev, Ori Sasson and Amnon Landan.

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In the company blog announcing the acquisition, Redkix Co-founders Oudi and Roy Antebi said that the Redkix application will “wind down”. “When we launched our enterprise application, our vision was to build a centralized, inclusive, and modern platform for work. By embracing email as part of the solution, we set out to open up participation, eliminate silos, and connect everyone at a company. As a result, we’ve seen how companies thrive when people work together. Bringing people closer together is at the core of Facebook. Workplace brings this mission to enterprises to make them more connected and productive. We’re aligned with their vision and excited to work with them to help companies collaborate and get work done,” said the brothers.

With Slack eliminating some of its major competition after buying Hipchat and Stride from Atlassian, the gap between Slack and other enterprise messaging apps like Microsoft’s Teams platform, Google’s Hangouts Chat, and Workplace by Facebook has increased. With Microsoft launching the free version of Microsoft Teams, it was apparent that Facebook would want to haul its position in the enterprise messaging space. But will Facebook’s acquisition of Redkix give the social media giant the upper hand?

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Venture Beat reported that Facebook’s investment might have been a direct way of gaining hold over Slack’s domination in the enterprise messaging space. “Facebook made Workplace, its answer to the fast-growing enterprise software startup Slack, publicly available to any company in 2016. As of October, 30,000 businesses used the product. Meanwhile, Slack said in May that it now has 70,000 paid teams on the platform, and Microsoft Teams had about 200,000 organizations using its platform as of March,” said the report, adding, “Today’s acquisition comes as an acknowledgment that businesses aren’t going to conduct all of their communications on Facebook.”

To date, Facebook claims 30,000 organizations are using the Workplace, Microsoft claims 200,000 organizations use Teams, while Slack claims 500,000 active organizations. So Slack’s clearly winning this one, will the others catch up soon?

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