Skype will acquire New York-based GroupMe (and Inc. 30 Under 30 honoree), a group messaging service for mobile phones, in a move to strengthen the Internet phone company’s text and photo messaging services.
In Sunday’s announcement, Skype’s CEO Tony Bates said the two companies have a shared vision to become “the daily communications choice for a billion people.”
“The GroupMe team has created an incredibly sticky group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making this a perfect addition to the voice, video and text products in the Skype family,” Bates said in the release.
The terms of the acquisition with Groupon will not be released to the public.
In May, Skype agreed to be bought out by Microsoft for $8.5 billion, but the transaction has not been finalized. Earlier this year, Skype also acquired Qik, a mobile video provider, which the company also hoped would secure its role as a mobile innovator.
Mashable reports that Skype’s announcement came as no surprise given how hyper-competitive the group messaging field has become. In the past year, Google, Facebook, and Apple have all made moves to enable group messaging in their products.
GroupMe was founded in 2010 at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon and is headquartered in New York. Skype was founded in 2003 and is based in Luxembourg.
