Amazon is reportedly looking into acquiring Silicon Valley start-up Slack for almost three times its value. According to business analysts, Amazon has the greater advantage if the acquisition of the work chat app takes place.
Up for sale
Slack is now up for grab, at least according to Bloomberg. The corporate chat app, which has claimed the moniker Silicon Valley's darling, is now on Amazon's radar for US$9 billion. Apart from the Amazon, other companies reported having shown interest towards the brand include Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft.
This bunch of corporations is the same pack who showed interests towards Twitter when it went up on sale but to no avail. In previous reports, Slack chief executive Stewart Butterfield has mentioned of turning down a lot of multi-billion dollar offers from other companies in the past few years but chose to keep it independent.
Even if Amazon would pay US$9 billion, thrice its current US$3 billion value, the move is seen to be the e-commerce firm's advantage more than any other prospective buyers. The Business Insider reports that "Slack could give Amazon a killer edge".
Slack acquisition benefits
Bloomberg sees several reasons why Amazon should bank on the acquisition of Slack to boost its presence in all of its products and services, including the retail and cloud computing industries.
Slack could be the missing link in the Echo speakers. With the work chat app, skills to add meetings to the calendar through Alexa could be a game-changer. For the Amazon Web Services, Slack is seen to be the bridge for the cloud computing division's data centres through the Internet.
With Amazon Business, the work chat app can be used in placing orders as until now the business-to-business marketplace of Amazon still relies on phone and paper. In general, Slack could help Amazon enhance its messaging platform.
Amid the reports, Slack did not confirm that it is up for sale.
