Facebook to acquire startup Kustomer as it faces antitrust glare

Facebook is facing the glare of regulators for buying up promising startups and neutralising them as a competitive threat. That hasn’t stopped it from shelling out for more companies.

The social network announced Monday that it planned to acquire Kustomer, a customer relationship management startup, to help it build its e-commerce business. The deal values Kustomer at close to $1 billion, said two people with knowledge of the talks. Kustomer, which is based in New York and was founded in 2015, had raised roughly $170 million in venture funding, according to data compiled by Crunchbase.

The deal, which has not yet closed and is subject to regulatory approval, could provide businesses and customers more support for interactions that occur on Facebook and its other apps,