Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) has acquired Seattle-based Ally, bringing another startup into its fold in a move to improve its business services.
The startup sells business software for tracking goals and objectives using data while keeping employees informed of the process. For Microsoft, it's the latest addition to its newly launched Viva, a platform for employee experience technology. In a company blog post Thursday announcing the deal, Microsoft said Ally would also be integrated into its other cloud-based business services, including Office and Teams.
Like its other cloud computing services, Microsoft has been equipping Viva and Teams with acquisitions and partnerships to make them more robust and break them out of its Office products. Over the summer, Microsoft announced a collaboration between Viva and Limeade, a Bellevue-based software company that focuses on employee well-being.
"Aligning employee work to the company’s strategic mission and core priorities is top of mind for every organization," said Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft's chief operating officer and corporate vice president of experiences and devices. "To do this, leaders need to invest in tools that communicate transparency around big company bets and create ways to cascade aspirational goals and report results at all levels of an organization."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"When we started talking to Kirk and team many months ago, we certainly weren't looking to get acquired," Vellore said in a LinkedIn post. "The highly engaging discussions helped us realize the big vision behind Microsoft Viva, and how Microsoft will help to magnify Ally.io's mission 1000 times."
Vetri Vellore, a former product unit manager at Microsoft, launched Ally in 2017. The company has raised $73 million through three funding rounds since 2019, according to Crunchbase. The latest was a $50 million Series C round led by San Francisco-based Greenoaks Capital. In 2019, Tiger Global Management led a $15 million Series B round.
