MoEngage acquires Aampe, betting millions of AI agents will reshape marketing's future

India's MoEngage bets that the future of marketing is millions of AI agents

Indian customer engagement software firm MoEngage has acquired San Francisco-based startup Aampe in an all-cash deal, betting that AI agents that make decisions for individual customers will become the future of marketing. MoEngage did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction, but a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the all-cash deal was worth tens of millions of dollars. Founded in 2020, Aampe develops software that assigns a dedicated 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 customers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and grew annual recurring revenue by 150% over the past year, MoEngage co-founder and Chief Executive Raviteja Dodda said in an interview. Dodda told TechCrunch that the acquisition will help it win customers using rival marketing platforms such as Salesforce and Adobe. "A large part of our growth is driven by migrations of enterprise customers from Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud," Dodda said. MoEngage recently signed three to four multi-million-dollar annual contract value deals with customers that switched from Salesforce, Dodda said. He's hopeful that the Aampe acquisition will help him win more of such customers. The acquisition comes as software companies race to embed AI deeper into enterprise applications, moving beyond tools that generate content or assist employees towards agents making autonomous decisions. In marketing, that includes deciding which customers to target, what 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 over six months after MoEngage raised $280 million through a mix of primary and secondary transactions. Around 20 Aampe employees will join MoEngage, taking the company's workforce to roughly 820 people. Founded in 2020, Aampe has raised about $28 million across three funding rounds. The startup counts Peak XV Partners, Z47, and Theory Ventures among its investors.

MoEngage acquires AI startup Aampe in first acquisition; eyes more deals in US, Europe

Customer engagement platform MoEngage has acquired AI startup Aampe, bolstering its artificial intelligence capabilities. MoEngage cofounder and chief executive Raviteja Dodda said the company is evaluating more inorganic growth opportunities, particularly in markets such as the US and Europe. Software-as-a-service provider MoEngage has acquired San Francisco-based startup Aampe, which builds autonomous artificial intelligence agents for individual users, marking its first acquisition as the company looks to deepen its AI capabilities. MoEngage cofounder and chief executive Raviteja Dodda did not disclose the financial terms of the deal while speaking to ET. The company, he said, is evaluating more inorganic growth opportunities, particularly in markets such as the US and Europe. "If there are companies in certain markets in Europe or the US, or in specific verticals that can help us scale faster, we would consider those," Dodda said. Product expansion and geographic acceleration are the two main areas MoEngage will evaluate for future deals, he said. MoEngage was valued at $850 million after its $280 million funding round last year. Investors of the company that operates from offices in Bengaluru and San Francisco include ChrysCapital, Goldman Sachs, B Capital and A91 Partners. Dodda in December 2025 said the company had $100 million in annual recurring revenue and had been growing at 30-40% year-on-year over the previous few years. Its customers include Flipkart, Nestle, Domino's, IndusInd Bank, Deutsche Telekom and McAfee. The acquisition comes as SaaS companies increasingly pursue acquisitions to shorten product development cycles amid intensifying competition in AI. In April, ET reported that AI firms were actively scouting for startups to build full-stack capabilities as enterprises shift from experimentation to large-scale deployment. Dodda said the deal strengthens MoEngage's position in AI-led customer engagement and improves total addressable market. "Many solutions in the market solve only one part of the problem -- timing, channel selection, or a specific use case. Aampe is differentiated because it solves the full stack of decisioning," he said. MoEngage will onboard Aampe's 30-plus customers and 20-member team as part of the acquisition. The startup's founders will lead MoEngage's agentic decisioning initiatives, Dodda said. 'One agent per customer' Aampe, founded in 2020 by trio scientists Paul Meinshausen, Schaun Wheeler and Sami Abboud, builds agentic AI tools for customer engagement, enabling brands to deliver hyper-personalised messages and app experiences at an individual level. Its platform uses reinforcement learning to automate decisions around what message to send, to whom, through which channel and at what time. "These are not customer-facing agents, but backend agents that help determine what message each user should receive," Dodda said. Aampe's AI agents are already deployed across consumer brands including Grab, Swiggy, Taxfix and ZenBusiness. According to the company, the platform runs hundreds of millions of AI agents and processes over 200 billion decisions every week. MoEngage competes with companies such as Braze, CleverTap, WebEngage, Insider and Netcore Cloud in the customer engagement and marketing automation market. MoEngage expects adoption of Aampe tools to initially be driven by digital-first companies and consumer internet businesses. Enterprise customers today account for nearly 60% of MoEngage's revenue. The US contributes around 35% to MoEngage's revenue, followed by Europe and the Middle East (25%), Southeast Asia (10-15%) and India (around 25%). MoEngage has not started a formal IPO process, Dodda said. He believes AI agents acting on behalf of users could reshape how brands engage with customers. These agents may increasingly search, compare products and transact autonomously across digital platforms. That creates a new challenge for brands: personalising experiences not just for human users, but also for AI agents acting on their behalf, he added.