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Image: Salesforce
Salesforce announced on May 27 that it will acquire cloud data management company Informatica for about $8 billion. Informatica’s entire technology stack will be integrated into the Salesforce ecosystem, with a focus on enabling the company to deliver more autonomous, agentic AI services.
The integration will occur “on a fast timeline,” said Robin Washington, president and chief operating and financial officer for Salesforce. The deal is expected to close in Salesforce’s financial year 2027, pending regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.
Salesforce seeks to accelerate its agentic AI offerings in order to “increase our market differentiation,” Washington said.
Salesforce is pursuing ‘AI-driven growth’ with Informatica
Salesforce’s considerable marketing and distribution teams will support Informatica’s cloud-native platform across its customer base.
Salesforce will use Informatica resources to create a unified architecture to “enhance Salesforce’s trusted data foundation critical for deploying powerful and responsible agentic AI,” according to a press release. Informatica offers a wide variety of data services, including data quality, privacy, governance, and metadata management.
Informatica data management with AI will be applied to Tableau, MuleSoft, Salesforce CRM applications, and more.
“This proposed acquisition will be a key enabler for Salesforce’s next phase of AI-driven growth,” Washington said in a press release.
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Salesforce will use Informatica’s integration, catalog, and data lineage tools to support AI-related auditability, traceability, and regulatory compliance. Informatica’s metadata will enable Salesforce’s AI agents to access, interpret, and act on enterprise data with greater accuracy. Salesforce also plans to add Informatica’s MDM, data quality frameworks, and policy management to work on making sure enterprise data as interpreted by AI is accurate.
“Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing data points to understanding their full context — origin, transformation, quality, and governance,” said Steve Fisher, president and chief technology officer, Salesforce, in a press release. “This clarity, from a unified Salesforce and Informatica solution, will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions.”
“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, chief executive officer of Informatica.
Salesforce tried to acquire Informatica last year
Salesforce out-bid several other companies circling Informatica, including Cloud Software Group (formerly Citrix Systems) and Thoma Bravo, according to the The Wall Street Journal.
In 2024, Salesforce and Informatica tried to work out a deal that would have seen Informatica valued at about $10 billion, but the two sides failed to reach final terms.
Salesforce had been snapping up companies before that, bringing Slack into its portfolio in 2021, Tableau in 2019 and MuleSoft in 2018.
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