The potential of bots is immense and exciting but there is a degree of hype surrounding bots and it is early in the adoption cycle. Consumer-facing bots have taken early steps in automating certain tasks and communicating with users in conversational commerce, while enterprise-facing bots have the potential to disrupt numerous large horizontal domains (e.g., CRM, HR, marketing, customer support, supply chain management, etc.). Over $320 million of venture financing has been raised since 2012 on the basis of this opportunity and there have been 14 acquisitions since 2015. The following report takes a closer look into the market as well as companies in the ecosystem, M&A and private placement activity.