Listen Labs confirmed Thursday it had walked away from a signed Series C term sheet in order to focus exclusively on being acquired and immediately deprecated by Salesforce. The AI research startup cited a strong strategic desire to skip the arduous process of building a sustainable business.
The discarded funding round would have valued Listen Labs at over $8 billion, a figure that founders reportedly realized would come with the terrifying expectation of eventually generating revenue. Industry analysts noted that accepting the Menlo Ventures capital would have required the engineering-focused team to hire a go-to-market organization, talk to real enterprise customers, and maintain a public roadmap for at least three to five years before inevitably running out of money.
By pursuing an acquisition by Salesforce instead, the startup hopes to bypass the operational phase entirely. Sources familiar with the talks indicated that the founders were highly attracted to the software giant's proven track record of purchasing buzzy tech companies, slapping their logos onto a crowded Dreamforce keynote slide, and slowly dismantling their core infrastructure until the original application is unrecognizable.
If we took the venture capital, we would be legally obligated to figure out what our software actually does for a living.
Salesforce executives have reportedly assured the startup that, pending regulatory approval, their cutting-edge voice models will be seamlessly integrated into a legacy CRM dashboard where no end user will ever figure out how to turn them on. At press time, the Listen Labs founding team was already shopping for the fleece vests they plan to leave draped over their empty Salesforce office chairs for the duration of their 18-month vesting cliff.