Salesforce Lit $8B on Fire Days After Their Office Burned… Now They’re Closer to Owning Agentic AI

Just days after an actual fire broke out in one of its towers, Salesforce is back in the headlines… this time for dropping $8 billion to buy Informatica. You know, because when life gives you fire… you double down and ignite a new one.

(Source: Wish TV)

At first glance, this might look like a textbook “please, Wall Street, text me back” move. Salesforce shares are down 16% year-to-date, and the company has been under growing pressure to rein in spending and focus on profitability… especially after activist investors like Elliott Management and ValueAct showed up with spreadsheets and sharp opinions last year. But CEO Marc Benioff appears done throwing darts at the M&A board like he has in the past. This time, he’s swinging for the Agentic AI fences… and Informatica is the bat. “Together, Salesforce and Informatica will create the most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry,” -Marc Benioff (or probably his assistant).

Salesforce is officially acquiring Informatica for $25 per share in cash, valuing the deal around $8B. This comes after a failed attempt to buy the company last year for an even higher price (around $11B), which makes this feel like Salesforce just waited for the holiday markdown.

And it worked… Informatica’s stock had been down over 20% in the past year, closing at $19.10 before the deal chatter started. When the news broke, it shot up over 5%. Nice little gift for shareholders still holding the bag from the IPO (looking at you). Salesforce says the deal should close early in fiscal 2027, which starts February 2026, and will be funded with a mix of cash and new debt (because what’s a little leverage between friends?).

If it wasn’t obvious already, it is now… Salesforce is going all-in on Agentic AI, and they’re putting $8 billion on the line that Informatica is the key to making that vision real. This is all about building a system where enterprise AI tools can actually operate… as in, comb through sprawling customer databases, identify opportunities, and take action across an organization’s entire tech stack without breaking things or needing a babysitter.

Informatica brings the kind of backend muscle Salesforce has been missing. Their tools handle the gritty work that AI systems choke on when it’s done poorly: integrating data from every department, tagging it with usable metadata, cleaning it up, governing access, and managing master records so marketing isn’t emailing the same customer three times under three slightly misspelled names. That kind of structure is what lets Salesforce dream bigger… because a smarter system is useless if it’s fed garbage from five different directions.

Benioff already has MuleSoft pulling data through APIs, Tableau making it look pretty, and Data Cloud warehousing it all. But those tools still need a data wrangler… something that can organize the flood of information and prep it for action. Informatica is that wrangler.

With that said, it’s not a clean play. Informatica’s footprint overlaps with MuleSoft, which could raise antitrust questions. And it’s bringing $1.9 billion in debt along for the ride. That’s not small change… even for a company with over $14 billion in cash. On top of that, Salesforce is doing all this after spending the last year swearing off big acquisitions to please activist investors who were already sharpening their pitchforks over runaway spending. They even disbanded their M&A committee to show they were serious. So… awkward.

Still, this is classic Benioff. When he sees a power vacuum in enterprise tech, he moves fast and writes big checks. This deal won’t get the media attention Slack did back in 2020, but it might have more long-term impact. And yes, a literal fire broke out in their tower days before the deal. So the timing is poetic.

PS: It’s a mess out there.

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Stock.News does not have positions in companies mentioned.