Salesforce is a major move to enhance AI and data infrastructure capabilities by acquiring cloud data management company Informatica in a $8 billion stock deal.
The announcement made Tuesday comes about a year after early rumors of the acquisition slipped share prices between the two companies. At the time, Informatica denied that it was on sale, but there are many changes in the year.
Under the terms of the transaction, Salesforce will pay $25 per share of cash to Informatica's Class A and Class B-1 common stock to adjust previous investments in the Company.
Founded in 1993, Informatica works with over 5,000 customers in over 100 countries. The company had a market capitalization of $7.1 billion at the time of publication.
The acquisition will help AI agents strengthen Salesforce's agent AI ambitions by providing more data infrastructure and governance, and helping AI agents scale more “safe, responsible, and across modern enterprises,” the company's press release said.
“Together we will charge Agent Force, Data Cloud, Tableau, Mulesoft and Customer 360, enabling autonomous agents to act with intelligence, context and confidence across all enterprises,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a press release. “This is a transformative step towards delivering corporate-grade AI that is secure, responsible, deeply integrated with global data.”
The road to this transaction began in April 2024, with reports emerging as Salesforce focusing on Informatica. The market response was quick. The two companies' stocks were terrified of difficult integration or strategic inconsistency. Informatica later issued an official statement denying the sale discussion. But what once thought was unlikely is now official.
Informatica is not the first data management company Salesforce has acquired in the past year. In September, Salesforce filmed its company with $1.9 billion in cash.
“Data security is more important than ever, and our unique proven expertise and products enhance our ability to provide our customers with robust data protection and management solutions,” said Steve Fisher, General Manager at Salesforce, in a press release at the time.
TechCrunch contacts Salesforce for more information.