May 27 (UPI) — Officials at San Francisco-based Salesforce have agreed to pay $8 billion to buy tech firm Informatica.
Informatica is a data management firm based in Redwood City, Calif., and agreed to accept Salesforce’s offer of $25 per share for Class A and Class B-1 common stock, the tech firms announced on Tuesday.
Salesforce is the world’s top-ranked artificial intelligence customer relationship management system and will use Informatica’s AI-powered data management tools to improve services for client organizations.
The proposed transaction would enhance Salesforce’s data foundation and improve its AI-powered services for clients, company officials said on Tuesday in a joint news release with Informatica.
“This is a transformational step in delivering enterprise-grade AI that is safe, responsible and deeply integrated with the world’s data,” said Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s chairman and chief executive officer.
“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,” Benioff added.
He said the merger would “supercharge” Salesforce’s Agentforce, Data Cloud, Tableau, MuleSoft and Customer 360 services by enabling autonomous agents to act with “intelligence, context and confidence across every enterprise.”
The proposed deal also fulfils a “shared vision” for helping organizations make the best use of data during the AI era, Informatica Chief Executive Officer Amit Walia said.
The merger “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,” Walia added.
If completed, the proposed merger enables Salesforce to:Ensure data is clear, trusted and actionable.Enable autonomous AI agents to interpret and act on complex data.Deliver more personalized and effective customer experiences. Fuel AI-powered decisions with enriched, standardized and trusted data.Support Tableau users with more accessible and better-understood data.
“Truly trustworthy AI agents need the most comprehensive understanding of their data,” said Steve Fisher, president and chief technology officer at Salesforce.
“Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing datapoints to understand their full context – origin, transformation, quality and governance,” Fisher said.
“This clarity … will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions.”
Investors responded well to the proposed merger, resulting in a 17% increase in Informatica share prices on Friday, Bloomberg reported.
The tech firm’s share price continued its climb on Tuesday with a 6.08% increase to $23.92 at the close of trading on Tuesday, according to MarketWatch.
