Meta Platforms mentioned on Tuesday it had closed its acquisition of Kustomer, a US customer support startup, after successful conditional EU antitrust approval for the deal final month.

The buy was first introduced in November 2020 however acquired delayed attributable to regulatory scrutiny together with a full-scale investigation from the European Commission.

The probe got here amid regulatory issues on either side of the Atlantic {that a} shopping for spree of startups by huge corporations could also be so-called killer acquisitions geared toward closing down nascent rivals.

Meta, previously generally known as Facebook, secured EU approval after agreeing to supply rivals free entry to its messaging channels for 10 years.

Kustomer sells CRM software program to companies to allow them to talk with customers by cellphone, e mail, textual content messages, WhatsApp, Instagram, and different channels. Its takeover would assist Facebook scale up its instant-messaging app WhatsApp, whose utilization has soared in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

© Thomson Reuters 2022