Indian company MoEngage is betting that the future of marketing lies in millions of AI agents

Indian customer engagement software company MoEngage has acquired San Francisco-based startup Aampe in an all-cash deal, betting that AI agents making decisions for individual customers will become the future of marketing.

MoEngage did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the all-cash deal is worth tens of millions of dollars.

Founded in 2020, Aampe is developing software that assigns a personalized AI agent to each customer, allowing brands to personalize messaging based on individual behavior rather than traditional audience segments and campaign rules. The startup has more than 30 clients across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and has increased its annual recurring revenue by 150% over the past year, MoEngage co-founder and CEO Raviteja Duda said in an interview.

Dodda told TechCrunch that the acquisition will help it win customers using competing marketing platforms like Salesforce and Adobe.

“A significant portion of our growth is driven by the migration of enterprise customers from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud,” Duda said.

MoEngage recently signed three to four deals worth multi-million-dollar annual contracts with customers who switched from Salesforce, Duda said. He hopes the acquisition of Aampe will help him win more of those customers.

The acquisition comes as software companies race to integrate AI more deeply into enterprise applications, moving beyond tools that generate content or help employees make autonomous decisions. In marketing, this includes deciding which customers to target, which messages to send, and when to send them.

Aampe’s technology is used by brands including Swiggy, Grab and Taxfix, some of which also use MoEngage’s customer engagement platform.

The acquisition comes more than six months after MoEngage raised $280 million through a mix of primary and secondary transactions. About 20 Aampe employees will join MoEngage, bringing the company’s workforce to about 820 people.

Founded in 2020, Aampe has raised approximately $28 million across three funding rounds. The startup counts Peak XV Partners, Z47, and Theory Ventures among its investors.