Another day, another mobile calendar app gets acquired. On Friday, Tempo announced on its website that it’s joining Salesforce, and that’s its shutting down its app on June 30. “Joining the Salesforce family will give us the opportunity to continue our mission at a much larger scale,” Tempo co-founder and CEO Raj Singh said in the note.
Tempo launched in 2013 as part of an emerging trend of “smart assistant” mobile apps for email, calendars, and such. Tempo connects to a user’s calendar, contacts, and other apps to provide helpful information and suggestions like sending an email if they’re running late for a meeting, or flight and weather details ahead of a trip. It competed with similar apps like Cue, Sunrise, Donna, and others.
Tempo also originated from SRI International, the research and development institute that gave birth to Siri, the iPhone’s personal assistant service (Apple acquired Siri in 2010). This, combined with the fact that Salesforce is shutting down the app hints that the enterprise software giant was after the powerful artificial intelligence technology that’s responsible for the app’s ability to assist the user. It will probably roll the technology into some of its other products and use Tempo’s engineering talent for existing or new products.
This acquisition is also notable because Microsoft, which recently considered acquiring Salesforce, acquired Tempo competitor Sunrise earlier this year. Microsoft, however, is keeping Sunrise running for now. Other acquisitions of productivity apps by enterprise software companies include SugarCRM’s purchase of Stitch, an email app for salespeople, and Microsoft’s acquisition of email app Accompli.
A spokesperson for Tempo AI declined to comment beyond the official announcement. Singh founded Tempo AI in 2011, and raised a total of $12.5 million in funding.
