Converse.AI, the Scotland-based developer of intelligent chatbots for business automation, has been acquired by Smartsheet, a high-growth automation software company based in Seattle.

Converse’s Chatflow software enables businesses to automate their business processes and build workflows to connect services such as Slack, Google, HubSpot, Salesforce, Twilio and PayPal, all without writing code.

In the coming months, Smartsheet will integrate Converse.AI’s conversational workflow and natural language processing capabilities into their cloud-based work management platform.

By merging their expertise, future Smartsheet forms could be automatically populated by a chatbot as it walks the user through a series of questions. Potentially, Smartsheet could use Converse.AI’s Chatflow technology to enable users to easily build and manage bots via a drag-and-drop interface – again without writing any code.

Tony Lucas, CEO of Converse.AI, told DIGIT: “The acquisition of Converse.AI by Smartsheet is a great acknowledgement of Scotland’s entrepreneurial technology hub on the global stage. We are really excited to not only continue with the Converse.AI vision but to work with Smartsheet to expand our business to meet our customer’s needs.”

A Partnership With Promise

Gene Farrell, head of product at Smartsheet, said of the acquisition: “This will help us provide customers with more business process scenarios and will enable our customers to accelerate work execution in a more intelligent and natural way—through conversation. ”

Lucas, commented “By becoming part of the Smartsheet team, we will be able to use their scale to our advantage and accelerate our cutting-edge product development.”

Converse.AI, founded in 2015 by Lucas and Gihan Munasinghe, will operate as a wholly-owned Smartsheet subsidiary. Currently, Smartsheet supplies its software to more than 70,000 brands across 190 countries, including more than half of the Fortune 500. Now with extra resources from the acquisition, Converse.AI plans to expand its customer base, take on new talent and accelerate its software development.