HubSpot, which dubs itself an inbound marketing and sales platform, acquired Motion AI, a chatbot builder used to create bots for platforms like Facebook Messenger and Slack without any programming skills required.

“It’s impossible to ignore the impact of chat and messaging, not just on the way B2B companies operate, but on society as a whole,” said Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.

“We’re in the midst of a massive shift as businesses embrace this new platform and consumers come to expect more immediate, always-on communication from brands,” he said, adding that the deal is in line with HubSpot’s mission to build technology that helps small and medium-sized businesses keep up with changing consumer behaviours.

Motion AI enables users to build, train, and deploy AI robots to do “almost anything imaginable”, from booking meetings to running customer service chats and diagnosing problems, HubSpot said in a statement.

The company launched on Product Hunt in November 2015, where it was voted the number one chatbot builder. It has facilitated more than 40 million messages since May 2016, with over 80,000 bots built to date.

HubSpot was a customer of Motion AI, through which it generated six times the number of marketing qualified leads compared to using email.

“Being able to experience the power of Motion AI’s technology first-hand was a key factor in HubSpot’s decision to acquire the company,” the firm said.

Motion AI’s technology will be incorporated into the HubSpot platform over the next several months, with the team working to create tools that help users automate important tasks, scale conversations, and engage and acquire new customers.

David Nelson, founder and CEO of Motion AI, said the firm is set to work on “some really innovative artificial intelligence tools.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.