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Salesforce is acquiring cloud data management firm Informatica for approximately $8 billion. The move powers up Salesforce's AI capabilities via its Agentforce platform and provides a more reliable data backbone, as detailed in the official announcement.
Data fueling agents: The core idea is to fuse Informatica's tools for data integration, cataloging, and governance with Salesforce's existing platforms. This combination is expected to give Salesforce's AI virtual representatives, under the Agentforce banner, cleaner and more context-rich data to act upon, improving the quality of AI-driven business processes.
Deal déjà vu: This acquisition wasn't pulled out of thin air; rumors of a Salesforce-Informatica pairing had surfaced about a year prior, unsettling markets before Informatica publicly stated it wasn't for sale. Fresh reports of revived discussions, first emerging via Bloomberg, sparked renewed interest and a stock bump for Informatica, with Reuters indicating other suitors had eyed the data company.
Spending spree continues: This transaction places Informatica among Salesforce's heftier purchases, following the nearly $28 billion spent on Slack in 2021 and the nearly $16 billion for Tableau in 2019. The move fits Salesforce's playbook of strategic buys to push into new territory or power up its tech arsenal; MuleSoft, for instance, joined its ranks in 2018 for $6.5 billion.
The bottom line: Salesforce is betting big that superior data management is the key to unlocking more potent and dependable enterprise AI. By integrating Informatica, the company looks to create a more complete ecosystem where its AI agents can operate with greater intelligence and safety across customer operations.
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Meanwhile, in the AI ecosystem: Salesforce isn't just stopping with large-scale data plays; it also recently moved to acquire Convergence.ai to enhance its Agentforce platform with more dynamic AI agent capabilities. This comes as Agentforce itself received updates last month for autonomous multi-step workflows and saw early pilot integrations with Informatica, even before the acquisition announcement.
