In a $1.1B deal, Qualtrics is set to acquire Reston-based Clarabridge

Six months after its IPO, Utah experience management company Qualtrics agreed to acquire Reston, Virgina-based Clarabridge for $1.125 billion in stock.

Clarabridge, which uses AI to power its conversation analytics platform, scrubs customer feedback from sources like social media, emails and product reviews. With the acquisition, Qualtrics intends to make a single communications platform, using the technology from both companies, for customer and employee reviews. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.

“This acquisition will further accelerate our growth and leadership as the world’s number one experience management company,” said Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin in a conference call July 29. “Clarabridge’s capabilities bring both breadth and depth to our platform and they put Qualtrics in an even stronger position to power every company’s experience transformation.”

Clarabridge was founded in 2006, and it was built by a team that included many alums of prominent Tysons, Virginia-based business intelligence company MicroStrategy. The company did not respond to a request for comment about what the acquisition means for its presence in the DMV. But its AI-based platform, which can understand effort, emotion and intent in messages, already has a worldwide reach. It’s currently used by clients including GM, Farmers, United Airlines, USAA, Bank of America, Expedia and UnitedHealthcare. Its product also can operate in 23 languages and over 150 industry models.

“Clarabridge’s ability to help companies discover what their customers are saying about them across unstructured sources and provide meaningful, actionable insights is a perfect complement to the Qualtrics platform,” said Clarabridge CEO Mark Bishof in a statement. “What we deliver is far more powerful as part of Qualtrics, and we have an incredible opportunity to accelerate our growth and innovation as part of the world’s #1 experience management company.”

Ahead of the acquisition, Clarabridge also debuted an intelligent search assistant known as “Clara” in June, which scans data sources and customer feedback. The company is currently in the midst of a summer product release for its communication resources, including the ability to bring in data from AWS S3 and Five9 for use on its platform. These features are expected to be available later this month.