ServiceNow’s Moveworks Acquisition Adds Front-End Tools, AI Talent

ServiceNow announced an agreement this week to acquire enterprise AI startup Moveworks as the company expands its agentic footprint. 

ServiceNow will buy MoveWorks in a cash-and-stock deal worth $2.85 billion, marking its biggest acquisition to date. Along with allowing ServiceNow to roll Moveworks’ front-end AI tools into its own offerings, the deal adds the startup’s team of 500 to the company. 

“We have been focused on data, AI and workflow, and this (acquisition) accelerates a lot of the things we’re doing already,” Amit Zavery, president, chief product officer and COO of ServiceNow told CIO Upside. 

Movework’s front-end technology suite provides users with an intuitive unified user interface that works across all parts of a business, said Zavery. One of its key offerings is its robust enterprise search tool, which creates a centralized way to quickly find relevant information from across a business’s systems.

• Good enterprise search tools can be hard to come by, said Zavery. While many enterprises want the ability to get a good sense of their internal data through enterprise search, these tools often face security and permissioning issues.
• Contextual understanding of the individual user is why Movework’s enterprise search product was so attractive to ServiceNow, he said. “What Moveworks has done is (create) a very well-thought out enterprise search which is specific to individual user requirements,” said Zavery. 

The capabilities go hand in hand with ServiceNow’s ability to contextually automate tasks, he said.

“(ServiceNow) is the control tower, or the integrated glue for many companies today,” said Zavery. “Now, when we combine that with (Moveworks’) enterprise search and integrated user experience, we become much more valuable to customers.” 

The purchase will also allow ServiceNow to expand its capabilities in customer relationship management, particularly customer service, which represents one of the “biggest and fastest-growing businesses for ServiceNow,” said Zavery. While Moveworks provides the “unified interface” for customers, ServiceNow’s tech helps them “through the journey of resolving issues,” he said.

The deal marks ServiceNow’s second acquisition this year: In January, the company announced a deal to buy Cuein, a conversational data firm, with a similar goal of accelerating its agentic AI plans. Rather than building competing tools, acquisitions like these help the company target the right markets at the right time, Zavery said. “We’ve been building a lot of things … We can’t build everything.” 

Plus, the addition of Movework’s staff to ServiceNow is particularly advantageous given that AI talent is “at a premium today,” said Zavery. “We’re getting an opportunity to really bring in a very, very talented team who has been in the middle of AI evolution.”