Collaboration and productivity development software provider Atlassian Corp. today announced that the company plans to acquire Loom Inc., a provider of a work-focused video collaboration platform for $975 million, its biggest deal ever.

Founded in 2016, Loom makes software that provides a way for users to record videos of their computer screens and easily share them with coworkers in order to provide context to their work and collaborate more easily in teams. The software and tools allow colleagues to get work done through direct visual cues about user experience, code reviews, sharing feedback, understanding what’s happening with editing video, troubleshooting and holding meetings.

Loom claims a number of large corporate customers, including Netflix, HubSpot, Juniper Networks and Atlassian.

“Async video is the next evolution of team collaboration, and teaming up with Loom helps distributed teams communicate in deeply human ways,” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-chief executive of Atlassian.

Atlassian cited the company’s existing “deep expertise on how teams work” and “go-to place for over 260,000 customers” as the reason for seeking out and buying Loom. It would bolster the company’s existing portfolio of productivity software for developers and engineers, including Jira, which is a project issue and ticket management system, where video could make a major difference in helping understand and troubleshoot problems.

The company also noted that it would incorporate Loom’s developments in artificial intelligence and video to help with transitioning among video, video transcripts and documents. Loom has invested in AI capabilities that take the burden off users when creating titles, summaries, chapters and tasks from video work. The AI can also produce transcripts and provide easy editing capabilities.

Atlassian said that for customers of Loom, this will bring the power of its platform to them by allowing users to plug video directly into ticketing workflows such as Jira and systems such as Confluence, which is a team knowledge base that can store and organize any type of document in a centralized and searchable manner.

Loom had raised a total of $203.6 million in total funding following its $130 million Series C round in May 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz. The same round gave the company the coveted status of “unicorn,” bringing its valuation to $1.53 billion for the first time — although the company laid off 14% of its staff, or 34 employees, in June, citing “economic uncertainty.”

Atlassian said the deal is expected to close in the third quarter of the fiscal year of 2024 and the total consideration will be comprised of about $880 million in cash, and the remainder will be equity in the company.

Photo: Atlassian