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

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

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

Meta, previously often 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 telephone, electronic 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 through the COVID-19 pandemic.

© Thomson Reuters 2022