Salesforce is scooping up a Chicago artificial intelligence firm that turns data into stories.
Narrative Science said in a blog post that it has signed an agreement to be acquired by Salesforce (NASDAQ: CRM). Once the deal closes, Narrative Science will be part of Tableau, a Salesforce-owned software firm that provides data visualization tools.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Narrative Science said that for now "nothing is changing and it’s business as usual," and the company will have more to share on its roadmap once the acquisition is finalized.
Narrative Science was founded in 2010 by Stuart Frankel, Kris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum. Its technology was used early on to turn baseball box score data into computer-generated game stories, and today it's used by businesses to make sense of their data and better understand sales figures, marketing and other metrics. Its software can create personalized data briefs, rather than requiring teams to go digging through dashboards to understand their data. Its customers include brands like Spotify, Deloitte, USAA and Hearst.
Narrative Science has raised $43 million in funding from investors like Chicago's Jump Capital, Battery Ventures, USAA and In-Q-Tel, the VC arm of the CIA.
The tech firm is just the latest Chicago startup to catch the eye of Salesforce, which has also acquired ÄKTA, Gravitytank, CloudCraze, Model Metrics and Instranet.
Salesforce announced in 2018 plans to open a new 57-story tower on Chicago's riverfront, which is expected to be completed by 2023.
