Kik acquires video chat company Rounds, opens offices in Toronto and Tel Aviv

Kik chat app maker Kik Interactive announced today that it has acquired the company Rounds for an undisclosed amount. Rounds’ tech and talent will continue to help build group video chat products for Kik.

Rounds helped launch group video chat on Kik last month, according to Kik CTO Chris Best.

“The reason that the video in Kik is so high-quality is in large part thanks to the work that they’ve done,” he said.

The Rounds acquisition also marks the opening of Kik’s first product and engineering offices outside of the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Canada. Kik will open offices in Toronto for the Kik Bot team, and Rounds’ office in Tel Aviv will become a Kik office. All 35 Rounds employees will join the Kik team in the new Tel Aviv office.

“We’re sort of believers in having site-specific missions for offices, so bots is sort of one of the initial things [at] the Toronto office, but really I think both of these offices are just a way to expand our product and engineering talent and hire fantastic people in both of those cities,” Best said.

Above: Kik video chat

Image Credit: Kik

Video chat has been added to several chat apps in recent months, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slack.

Kik has 300 million registered users, a number the company first shared last June. The Rounds app has approximately 40 million users, according to a Kik spokesperson.

Since 2009, Rounds has received $24 million in investment from companies like Sequoia Capital, Samsung Ventures, and Verizon Ventures.