E-signature and digital transaction company DocuSign Inc. today agreed a deal to buy the technology assets and hire most of the staff from a machine learning startup called Appuri Inc.

The terms of the deal, which will see DocuSign obtain rights to Appuri’s source code, were not disclosed.

The company had raised a total of $6.5 million since 2013, including a $2 million round in March. Investors included onetime Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Baseline, Divergent Ventures and TDF Ventures.

Appuri offers what it calls a customer engagement platform that businesses can use to automate engagement with their customers. The platform is powered by audience segmentation technology that allows companies to deliver targeted marketing messages and product recommendations to customers most likely to be receptive to them.

DocuSign said it decided to acquire Appuri’s intellectual property assets and most of its staff following a pilot project between the two firms that helped expose the path to purchase for the former’s products. In a blog post, DocuSign Senior Vice President of Engineering Tom Casey explained the motivation behind the acquisition, saying he’d like to make these kinds of insights available for its customers too.

“The more companies bet on DocuSign as the platform to manage their digital transactions, the more likely it is that they will want advanced reporting and analytics capabilities to help identify and improve how they execute their agreements.” Casey said.

Once the acquisition is done, DocuSign plans to integrate Appuri’s technology into its own platform. It will also remove Appuri’s products from the market. Most of Appuri’s team, including its co-founders Damon Danieli and Bilal Aslam, will take up residence with DocuSign’s product development group.

“As we began working with DocuSign, it was clear there was an opportunity for us to bring the capabilities of our own platform to a much broader global audience,” Danieli said in a statement.

Image: DocuSign