Headquarters
Austin, TXFounded
2019CEO / Founder
Chris TranquillEmployees
501-1000Funding
AcquiredProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.4/10Website
www.khoros.comProfile updated
Khoros is a customer engagement software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, originally founded in 2001 as Lithium Technologies. The company provides online community management, social media marketing, social analytics, and digital customer care for enterprise brands.
Khoros was formed in 2019 when Vista Equity Partners combined Lithium with Spredfast. The company serves more than 2,000 brands globally, including Samsung, Visa, and Ford.
In 2025 Khoros was acquired by IgniteTech, marking another chapter of ownership changes. Chris Tranquill has served as CEO since 2022.
All products by Khoros reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Khoros's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.7 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Who Khoros competes with, and how they differ.
Sprinklr is the closest direct rival in unified social-media-management and customer-experience software for large enterprises; it went public via NYSE IPO in 2021 while Khoros has stayed privately held under PE ownership throughout its history.
Kustomer targets the same high-volume, consumer-brand support buyer as Khoros Care, but is built around a unified customer-timeline CRM model rather than Khoros's roots in social publishing and online communities.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedAda is a narrower, pure-play AI chatbot automation vendor that resolves support inquiries without human agents, competing directly with the AI/bot layer Khoros built through its 2021 Flow.ai acquisition rather than the full platform.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedNetomi's agentic AI platform resolves inquiries across email, chat, voice, SMS and social -- the same channel mix as Khoros Care -- but sells the AI-agent layer alone rather than a combined social-management-plus-care suite.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedZendesk competes for the same enterprise support budget with a ticketing-first customer service platform used by 200,000+ companies, versus Khoros's narrower base of large consumer brands built out of social and community management.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedIntercom overlaps on AI-assisted messaging support, but sells primarily to SaaS and tech companies for in-app and website chat rather than Khoros's core market of consumer brands managing customer engagement across social channels at scale.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedKey milestones in Khoros's history, with sources.
Khoros lays off 116 employees in Austin following IgniteTech acquisition
Roughly three months after IgniteTech's acquisition, Khoros filed a WARN notice for layoffs affecting 116 employees at its Austin offices effective August 19, 2025 -- roughly two-thirds of its local headcount.
warntracker.comIgniteTech acquires Khoros from Vista Equity Partners
IgniteTech, an Austin-based AI-first enterprise software company, acquired Khoros from Vista Equity Partners; financial terms were not disclosed and Khoros continued to be led by CEO Chris Tranquill.
finsmes.comChris Tranquill promoted to CEO of Khoros, succeeding Jack Blaha
Chris Tranquill -- Khoros's chief strategy officer and co-founder of Topbox, which Khoros had acquired in 2021 -- was promoted to chief executive officer; Blaha moved into a senior advisor role.
destinationcrm.comKhoros acquires Flow.ai, a conversational AI chatbot platform
Khoros acquired Flow.ai, a Tilburg, Netherlands-based visual bot-building platform used to create chatbots for Facebook, WhatsApp and the web, to strengthen its conversational-AI and automation capabilities.
gilbane.comKhoros acquires Topbox and closes new growth investment from Vista Equity Partners
Khoros acquired customer-experience analytics software maker Topbox and closed an additional equity investment from existing investors including Vista Equity Partners; deal terms were not disclosed.
finsmes.comJack Blaha named CEO of Khoros, succeeding Pete Hess
Khoros appointed Jack Blaha -- former CEO of fellow Vista Equity Partners portfolio company Lone Wolf Technologies -- as chief executive, succeeding Pete Hess, who had led the company through the 2018 Lithium-Spredfast merger.
research-live.comSpredfast and Lithium formally rebrand as Khoros; Austin named new headquarters
The merged company formally adopted the name Khoros (the Greek word for "chorus") and named Austin, TX its new global headquarters while retaining its San Francisco office; at the time Khoros had 431 Austin employees and more than 2,000 customers including Pizza Hut, Sprint and HomeAway.
siliconhillsnews.comVista Equity Partners acquires Spredfast and merges it with Lithium Technologies (predecessor merger that created Khoros)
Vista Equity Partners acquired Spredfast and announced it would merge Spredfast with its existing portfolio company Lithium Technologies into one digital-customer-engagement platform; the combined company operated under the Lithium name for another six months before being renamed Khoros.
pehub.comVista Equity Partners agrees to acquire Lithium Technologies (Lithium predecessor)
Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners announced a definitive agreement to acquire Lithium Technologies from its venture investors; the deal closed July 28, 2017, more than a year before Lithium merged with Spredfast to eventually form Khoros.
finsmes.comLithium Technologies founded (Lithium predecessor)
Lithium Technologies -- one of the two companies that later merged into Khoros -- was founded in 2001 by Dennis Fong, Lyle Fong, Michel Thouati, Kirk Yokomizo, John Joh, Nader Alizadeh, Michael Yang and Matt Ayres to build online-community and social-media-management software.
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