Salesforce moves to acquire Informatica in $8B bid to fortify AI data strategy

Salesforce has struck a definitive agreement to acquire data management firm Informatica in a transaction valued at approximately $8 billion, marking its largest deal since the $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack in 2021. The move underscores the software giant’s strategic pivot back to major M&A as it sharpens its focus on artificial intelligence and enterprise data infrastructure.

Under the terms of the agreement, holders of Informatica’s Class A and Class B-1 common stock will receive $25 in cash per share — a premium of roughly 30% over the stock’s closing price before the deal talks became public. Salesforce will finance the deal through a mix of available cash and new debt. The acquisition has already been approved by the boards of both companies and by shareholders representing about 63% of Informatica’s voting power.

The deal, expected to close early in Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027, represents a significant effort by Salesforce to consolidate its position in the enterprise AI sector. By bringing Informatica’s data cataloging, governance, integration, and privacy tools into its fold, Salesforce plans to create a unified, scalable architecture for AI-powered applications across its ecosystem — including Data Cloud, MuleSoft, Tableau, and Agentforce, its AI agent platform.

“Salesforce and Informatica together will deliver an industry-first, agent-ready data platform,” said Marc Benioff, CEO and Chair of Salesforce. “This acquisition strengthens our hand in the $150 billion-plus enterprise data market, especially in areas like Public Sector, Life Sciences, and Financial Services.”

The integration aims to enhance AI agents’ ability to interpret, manage, and act on enterprise data with greater contextual depth, transparency, and security — requirements that are increasingly critical as enterprises look to deploy autonomous systems at scale.

Salesforce’s Agentforce platform, designed to enable digital labor in functions like customer service and recruiting, is central to the company’s AI ambitions. The combined technologies of Informatica and Salesforce will facilitate more complex automation by embedding metadata management, data lineage tracking, and rigorous governance directly into the AI workflow.

Executives from both firms emphasized the operational significance of merging Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) with Salesforce’s CRM and analytics platforms. Steve Fisher, Salesforce CTO, stated that the addition of Informatica’s capabilities would give AI agents a deeper understanding of enterprise data, enabling smarter and more responsible decision-making processes.

The acquisition follows Salesforce’s earlier purchases of MuleSoft, Tableau, and Slack — all part of a longer-term strategy to expand beyond CRM and into a broader enterprise software stack. The company’s return to high-profile dealmaking comes after a period of investor scrutiny and internal cost-cutting, prompted by pressure from activist shareholders to improve margins and capital efficiency.

Salesforce has stated that it expects the deal to be accretive to its non-GAAP operating margin, earnings per share, and free cash flow beginning in the second year following the close. The company also assured investors that its capital return program will remain unaffected.