ServiceNow has completed its acquisition of AI company Moveworks. It paid $2.85 billion for the startup, which was founded in 2016. With this move, ServiceNow is strengthening the agentic capabilities of its own platform. It will also breathe a sigh of relief, as the deal seemed to be off the table for a while.
ServiceNow announced on Monday that the acquisition of Moveworks has been completed. The company is combining its workflow automation with Moveworks’ front-end AI assistant and enterprise search technology. According to President Amit Zavery, the acquisition accelerates ServiceNow’s vision of using AI for people in every part of the enterprise.
At a more basic level, ServiceNow will be pleased that doubts surrounding the acquisition have been dispelled. In July, the antitrust watchdog in the United States appeared to be considering blocking the deal on competition grounds. It remained a “second request” for more information from both parties. That in itself was not alarming, or need not be, but it often precedes actual steps to get an acquisition off the ground. We saw similar steps from global antitrust bodies in the Broadcom takeover of VMware, which was ultimately approved, but also in Nvidia’s attempt to acquire Arm, which failed.
Combination of strengths
The transaction, now final, seems extremely logical given ServiceNow’s ambitions. ServiceNow provides workflow automation and AI governance, while Moveworks offers an accessible front end that allows employees to ask questions and take actions in plain language. Moveworks CEO Bhavin Shah emphasizes that the combination of the two parties enables scalable agentic AI solutions.
ServiceNow announced the acquisition earlier this year and wants to position itself more firmly as an agent provider against Salesforce, Microsoft, Google, and others. The company is investing heavily to realize these ambitions across the entire IT stack. Earlier this month, it also acquired identity security player Veza for more than $1 billion.
Proven technology and customer base
Moveworks has 5.5 million users and serves customers such as Siemens, Toyota, and Unilever. Approximately 250 customers currently use both ServiceNow and Moveworks; for them, little will change initially. Nearly 90 percent of Moveworks customers have fully rolled out the technology within their organizations.
At ServiceNow itself, AI agents now autonomously resolve 90 percent of IT requests and 89 percent of customer service requests. Resolution times have been reduced by almost sevenfold. According to the company, these results already demonstrate the significant impact of agentic AI on work processes. Nevertheless, the technology is still in full development. After all, MCP and related standards for agentic AI have only been a reality for a year.
With this acquisition, ServiceNow is also expanding its AI expertise in terms of personnel. Hundreds of AI specialists from Moveworks are joining the team. This should accelerate innovation and further expand ServiceNow’s AI roadmap.