Redkix Inc., a team chat startup with offices in California and Israel, today revealed that it has been acquired by Facebook Inc. to boost the company’s Workplace collaboration platform.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to a source close to the matter who spoke with Israeli business publication CTech, the transaction is valued at $100 million. Redkix previously raised $17 million in funding from a group that included Salesforce.com Inc.’s venture capital arm.

The deal buys Facebook a service that differs from most of the other contenders in team collaboration. Redkix enables users to join conversations not only via the native chat interface, but also by email. A worker can message a specific chat channel from their inbox and receive replies the same way, even if they don’t have a Redkix account.

The service’s feature set aligns well with what Facebook has set out to accomplish in the collaboration market. Workplace lets companies set up internal versions of the social network, complete with the original interface, to provide a familiar collaboration environment for employees. Redkix prioritizes familiarity as well by enabling users to collaborate via their existing email account instead of having to use the chat interface.

Facebook didn’t specify what it plans to do with the service. Redkix founders Oudi Antebi and Roy Antebi said in a statement that the service will be shut down as part of the deal, which may indicate the social network plans to fuse it into Workplace.

The timing of the deal is notable. Facebook Wednesday published earnings results for the second quarter that missed sales projections and included a pessimistic forecast, causing its market value to plummet by more than $110 billion. In the long run, expanding into new markets such as team collaboration could potentially enable Facebook to open additional sources of growth. 

But the company still has a lot of work ahead. Facebook said earlier this year that Workplace is used by “more than 30,000 companies,” while team chat market leader Slack Technologies Inc. boasts 70,000 paying customers. There are also many other contenders in the segment including Microsoft Corp. and other big names. 

Photo: Facebook