Salesforce announced that it has reached and signed an agreement to acquire Informatica, the leader in AI-powered data management. The agreement will see Salesforce acquire Informatica for approximately $8 billion. Less the current stake that Salesforce has with the company.
Under the terms of the agreement, the current shareholders will receive $25 per share in cash. The Informatica share price closed yesterday at $23.92. It has risen sharply from May 22nd, when it had closed at $19.01. The transaction is expected to close early in the Salesforce fiscal year 2027.
Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO of Salesforce, commented, “We’re excited to acquire Informatica for approximately $8 billion — uniting the world’s #1 AI CRM with the #1 AI-powered MDM and ETL platform. This combination brings together Salesforce’s Einstein and Informatica’s CLAIRE AI engines to forge the ultimate AI-data platform — trusted, explainable, and built to scale.
“Together, we’ll supercharge Agentforce, Data Cloud, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Customer 360, enabling autonomous agents to act with intelligence, context, and confidence across every enterprise. This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible, and deeply integrated with the world’s data.”
“This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible, and deeply integrated with the world’s data.”
It’s all about data and AI
Last year, at Dreamforce, Salesforce bet big on its Agentic AI offering, Agentforce. It has continued to roll out new agents over the last few months. However, the acquisition of Informatica will potentially strengthen its data foundation, which underpins its Einstein AI capabilities.
Informatica brings expertise and a comprehensive data platform. Which includes a rich data catalogue, data integration, governance, quality and privacy, metadata management, and Master Data Management (MDM) services.
The combination with the Salesforce platform should help power its AI offerings in the future. The question will be how much better the data management platform will become? What will be the disruption to customers for any migrations and what benefits will it bring?
Data management is critical, but customers will want to know how Salesforce will pay for the acquisition. They will be footing that bill with additional charges as they migrate to any new data platform.
What will Infomatica bring to Salesforce Data Cloud
Salesforce called out three areas where the Information Data Management platform will provide additional capabilities to power the Agentic AI architecture that Salesforce has built.
- Data Transparency: Informatica’s advanced integration, catalogue, and lineage tools show where data comes from, how it has changed, and how it is used — crucial for auditability and regulatory compliance.
- Data Understanding: Informatica’s rich metadata, combined with Salesforce’s unified data model, will empower AI agents to interpret, connect, and act on enterprise data with meaningful context.
- Data Governance: Built-in MDM, data quality controls, and policy management ensure that all data driving AI is standardised, accurate, consistent, and secure.
Amit Walia, CEO of Informatica, commented, “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. We have a shared vision for how we can help organizations harness the full value of their data in the AI era.”
Why does this make sense for Salesforce?
The big challenge of any technology acquisition is to ensure that when combining the two architectures, the sum of the parts is greater than what was before. Salesforce believes that by adding Informatica capabilities to its own, it can accelerate growth, taking its AI capabilities further than it has before.
Salesforce called out five key improvements that it expects the Informatica data platform to provide.
- The combination of Salesforce Data Cloud and Informatica technology will strengthen Salesforce Data Cloud’s leadership. Once combined, customer data will be clear, trusted, and actionable on a unified platform.
- The combined platform will provide a better platform for Agentforce and Salesforce AI agents. Enabling them to push the boundaries of their Agentic AI capabilities.
- It claims the trusted data cloud will further augment Customer 360 and enable it to deliver more personalised and effective customer experiences. However, it falls short of explaining how enhanced.
- With a better data management platform, MuleSoft will benefit from improved data quality, integration, cataloguing, and governance. Which will ensure that data flowing through MuleSoft APIs is not just connected but also enriched, standardised, and trustworthy.
- The improvements to data will also benefit Tableau. With more accurate data, insights from Tableau will be enhanced with context-driven insights.
Steve Fisher, President and Chief Technology Officer, Salesforce, said “Truly autonomous, trustworthy AI agents need the most comprehensive understanding of their data. The combination of Informatica’s advanced catalog and metadata capabilities with our Agentforce platform delivers exactly this.”
He said “Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing data points to understand their full context — origin, transformation, quality, and governance.</em> 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.”
How will it happen?
Once the deal is closed, Salesforce aims to rapidly integrate the Informatica technology Stack. It does not give a timescale for doing so, but no doubt the preliminary work is already beginning. Elements that Salesforce will take from the Informatica platform include:
- data integration
- data quality
- data governance
- unified metadata for Agentforce
- Single data pipeline with MDM on Data Cloud
The end result will be a “system of understanding” embedded into the Salesforce ecosystem.
Will this be the final price?
The acquisition comes just over a year after Salesforce failed to agree terms with Informatica. In April 2024, Informatica’s share price peaked at $38.48. The difference in price has already prompted Johnson Fistel, PLLP, to launch an investigation into whether the Informatica board members breached their fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed sale.
Is this an opportunistic attempt by Johnson Fistel? Or will it gain traction from the other suitors that were looking to acquire Informatica? These were rumoured to include Cloud Software Group (formerly Citrix Systems) and Thoma Bravo.
Institutional Informatica shareholders include Permira, Canada Pensions Plan, Merrill Lynch, Vanguard Fiduciary and Fidelity Investments Canada (Source Marketscreener). If Johnson Fistel cannot persuade them to join the action, it is likely to fail.
Looking forward
Looking forward, Salesforce will continue to support Informatica’s strategy of building best-in-class, AI-powered data management products. The inference is that the Informatica brand will continue and that Informatica will continue to develop its industry-leading, integrated solutions to connect, manage, and unify data across any cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud environment.
What isn’t clear is how this will unfold. Will Salesforce take elements of the Informatica platform and embed them, or will it rip and replace its own data cloud tech stack (this seems unlikely)? If it takes elements of the Informatica data management platform, what will that mean for its roadmap? Will the requirements of Informatica only customers conflict with what Salesforce needs for its platform?
Salesforce also indicates that it will “invest in Informatica’s ecosystem of data and infrastructure partners.” These partners could benefit from access to some of Salesforce’s customer base and partner network. It will be interesting to see how its presence on the Appexchange evolves. Informatica currently has a single listing on the AppExchange: “Informatica Customer 360 for Salesforce—a native solution with proven results.”
In some ways, this indicates the real benefits that Salesforce customers will see once the platforms are integrated:
- Maximize your investment in Salesforce and regain trust in your Salesforce data, and fix, merge and deduplicate millions of customer records into a global, single customer view within a single Salesforce org, or across two or more Salesforce orgs.
- Gain a detailed view of how accounts and customers are related and manage multiple hierarchies for roll-ups, views and reporting, including by region, line of business, sales structure, D&B structure, as defined by your ERP, and more.
- Reduce Salesforce administration headaches and maintain complete, accurate, and consistent customer data with integrated data quality, global contact data verification and validation, and 3rd party data enrichment.
The future, AI-powered customer Success
The acquisition of Informatica aims to put Salesforce at the forefront of Agentic AI. Something that Benioff boasted of at Dreamforce last year. Data is the fuel for AI, and the better the quality of that data, the better the quality of the AI. There is still a lot of work to be done. And a lot of questions that the two companies have yet to answer.
However, if successful, this acquisition could see Salesforce demonstrate proven leadership in the AI revolution that many companies are witnessing.
Robin Washington, President & Chief Operating and Financial Officer of Salesforce, commented, “Our acquisition strategy is methodical, patient, and decisive — targeting transformative assets like Informatica when the calculus aligns to maximise customer success.
This proposed acquisition will be a key enabler for Salesforce’s next phase of AI-driven growth, and we will move quickly to integrate their capabilities and unlock synergies on a fast timeline, particularly in areas like Public Sector, Life Sciences, Healthcare, and Financial Services. We’re laser-focused on accelerated execution to increase our market differentiation and deliver sustained benefits for all Salesforce stakeholders.”
Bruce Chizen, Informatica Chairman and Senior Advisor and Operating Partner at Permira said, “Permira and CPP Investments partnership with Informatica is clear proof of the benefits of a long-term investing mindset and focus on transformational growth at scale. This exceptional outcome with Salesforce is a testament to that philosophy.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is another significant acquisition by Salesforce, and one that will perhaps be tougher to generate returns on in the short term. However, in acquiring Informatica, Salesforce is perhaps building a technology stack that is future-enabled. It raises questions about whether it sees its current technology stack as capable of scaling to cope with the massive demand that AI will impose upon it.
With the Informatica platform, it believes that it can continue growing and expanding its capabilities. This means that Informatica can continue developing and selling its platform with a massive market opportunity within the Salesforce ecosystem. There is a lot of work to be done, and Salesforce will want to ensure that the impact on customers is kept to a minimum.
The Salesforce fiscal year starts on February 1st. It means that the deal is likely to close early in the calendar year 2026. Perhaps around a year from now. It will be interesting to see what information is available at Dreamforce 2025, which is being held October 14-16. Customers will no doubt have a lot of questions by then and will expect Salesforce to have some answers.
