Salesforce takeover of Informatica is on for $8 billion

Marc Benioff eyes up all those lovely data tools for AI push

Salesforce is to buy Informatica, the enterprise data management and analytics biz, for around $8 billion.

The CRM giant said today [PDF] it has entered into an agreement to acquire Informatica — founded in 1993 — to boost its portfolio around data management and governance with the aim of "deploying powerful and responsible agentic AI."

The main interest lies in the combination of Informatica's data catalog, data integration, governance, quality and privacy, metadata management, and Master Data Management (MDM) services with the Salesforce platform intending to establish a "unified architecture for agentic AI."

In September of last year, Salesforce bought Own Company, a SaaS data protection and data management company, for $1.9 billion in cash. The decision to take on another purchase comes 18 months after activist investor Elliott Management took a multibillion-dollar stake in Salesforce, seemingly disappointed in growth, margins, and a failure to elicit value from a string of expensive mergers.

Salesforce famously bought office collaboration platform Slack for $27 billion in 2021. Other mergers included Tableau, the data visualization and analytics system, for $15.7 billion in 2019; as well as the API farmer MuleSoft, which Salesforce spent to $6.5 billion to take over in 2018.

In a prepared statement, Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, said:

"By uniting the power of Data Cloud, MuleSoft, and Tableau with Informatica's industry-leading, advanced data management capabilities, we will enable autonomous agents to deliver smarter, safer, and more scalable outcomes for every company, and significantly strengthen our position in the $150 billion-plus enterprise data market."

Salesforce said it bought Informatica for its integration, catalog, and lineage tools as well as its background in metadata management.

"Joining forces with Salesforce represents a significant leap forward in our journey to bring data and AI to life by empowering businesses with the transformative power of their most critical asset — their data," said Amit Walia, CEO of Informatica. "We have a shared vision for how we can help organizations harness the full value of their data in the AI era."

The Informatica deal brings Salesforce's acquisition spree to around $60 billion over the last 10 years. However, critics have claimed that the SaaS company has not always made the most of these mergers or created the benefits it promised.

In January 2023, Salesforce said it would cut about 7,000 jobs "to reduce operating costs, improve operating margins, and continue advancing the Company's ongoing commitment to profitable growth."

At the time, Benioff said the company had hired too many people during the pandemic. ®