Salesforce Scoops Up Informatica for $8 B to Turbo-Charge Its AI Data Cloud

Salesforce just reached for a bigger slice of the AI pie, inking an $8-billion cash deal to acquire cloud–data-management veteran Informatica at $25 a share. Marc Benioff says the company’s cataloguing, governance and privacy tools will plug straight into Data Cloud, MuleSoft and Tableau—super-charging Agentforce, Salesforce’s new autonomous-AI platform. The purchase, funded with balance-sheet cash and fresh debt, follows Salesforce’s Slack, Tableau and MuleSoft splurges but rings in far cheaper than those megadeals.

Why the swoop now? Informatica’s language-processing LPUs (built with partner Groq) promise faster, cheaper AI data wrangling—exactly what Salesforce needs to keep pace with Microsoft, Oracle and ServiceNow as customers clamor for trustworthy data pipelines. Shares reacted on cue: Informatica jumped 6 percent on Tuesday’s close, while Salesforce crept 1 percent higher, investors betting the fusion delivers stickier cloud subscriptions without wrecking margins.

Regulators will give the tie-up a once-over, yet analysts see limited overlap and plenty of upside in folding Informatica’s 5,000-plus clients into Salesforce’s CRM universe. Benioff is already teasing an “autonomous agent” chain that not only cleans and maps data but also acts on it—think self-healing sales forecasts and hands-free marketing ops. If the deal clears by year-end, expect a flurry of cross-sell offers and, perhaps, the next step in Salesforce’s long-running bid to own the entire enterprise data stack.