Meta Reportedly Divests Itself Of Kustomer

Meta has reportedly added one team and divested itself of another.

The tech giant added 10 people experienced in artificial intelligence (AI) networking technology, Reuters reportedFriday (May 5).

It also struck a deal to divest itself of business software provider Kustomer, which it acquired last year, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)reported Friday, citing unnamed sources.

The 10 people added by Meta had previously been building AI networking technology at Graphcore, a British chip maker. They joined Meta in February or March, according to the Reuters report.

The report said adding the team of 10 is part of Meta’s efforts to boost its data centers’ ability to handle the demand from the company’s teams who are building AI features.

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“They bring deep expertise in the design and development of supercomputing systems to support AI and machine learning at scale in Meta’s data centers,” a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

In the move involving Kustomer, Meta is trading its ownership of the firm to three venture firms in exchange for their funding the newly independent company’s continued operations, according to the WSJ report.

Meta acquired the company last year for $1 billion in hopes of integrating Kustomer’s messaging services into its own but decided to divest itself of the firm to focus on its core business, the report said.

As PYMNTS reported in May 2022, Kustomer was at the time squarely at the center of Meta’s efforts to deliver elevated commerce experiences in messaging.

The aim was to enable businesses to improve their customer service with a messaging-first platform built on top of all the channels and messaging platforms that are used for conversations with customers.

Beginning in November 2022, Meta began making reductions in all its organizations.

The firm announced that it would lay off more than 10,000 employees—13% of its workforce — in the first wide-ranging layoffs in the company’s history.

In a memo to employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the expectations that the increase in eCommerce shopping that began with COVID-19 would continue beyond the pandemic turned out to be wrong.