The acquisition of Mailchimp will help Intuit, the developer of TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, and Credit Karma, to advance its strategy to become an AI-driven expert platform

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Intuit headquarters at 2700 Coast Avenue in Mountain View, California. (Credit: Coolcaesar/ Wikipedia)

US-based financial software firm Intuit has agreed to acquire Mailchimp, a customer engagement and marketing platform for SMEs, in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $12bn.

Established in 2001, Mailchimp started as a provider of email marketing solutions and developed into a customer engagement and marketing automation driven by an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technology stack.

The acquisition of Mailchimp will help Intuit, the developer of TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, and Credit Karma, to advance its strategy to become an AI-driven expert platform.

It is expected to help Intuit to speed up its strategic Big Bets – to become the centre of small business growth and disrupt the small business mid-market.

Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi said: “We’re focused on powering prosperity around the world for consumers and small businesses. Together, Mailchimp and QuickBooks will help solve small and mid-market businesses’ biggest barriers to growth, getting and retaining customers.

“Expanding our platform to be at the centre of small and mid-market business growth helps them overcome their most important financial challenges.

“Adding Mailchimp furthers our vision to provide an end-to-end customer growth platform to help our customers grow and run their businesses, putting the power of data in their hands to thrive.”

Upon closing of the acquisition, both firms will focus to deliver an end-to-end customer growth platform for small and mid-market businesses, enabling them to get their business online, market their business and manage customer relationships.

Furthermore, the platform is expected to help the business to benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees, optimise cash flow, be organised and stay compliant, with experts at their fingertips.

Mailchimp CEO and co-founder Ben Chestnut said: “Over the past two decades, we’ve vastly expanded and evolved Mailchimp’s platform to help millions of small businesses around the world start and grow.

“With Intuit, we’ve found a shared passion for empowering small businesses. By joining forces with Intuit, we’ll take our offerings to the next level, leveraging Intuit’s AI-driven expert platform to deliver even better products and services to small businesses.

“This is an exciting new chapter for Mailchimp, our 1,200+ dedicated employees, and customers.”

Intuit expects to finance the cash consideration through cash on hand and new debt of about $4.5bn to $5bn.

The acquisition is expected to be completed before the end of Intuit’s second quarter of fiscal 2022, subject to receipt of necessary regulatory approvals and satisfaction or waiver of other customary closing conditions.