Why Salesforce Will Buy Informatica for $8 Billion

Salesforce will acquire data management vendor Informatica in a debt-and-cash deal worth approximately $8 billion, the companies said today. And the arrangement could propel Salesforce’s future in agentic AI.

Specifically, Salesforce plans to use Informatica’s capabilities to retrieve data from a variety of cloud, on-premises, and hybrid cloud environments and get it into shape for reliable use in Salesforce’s customer relationship management (CRM) applications.

According to a range of industry sources, enterprises continue to struggle not with the intricacies of AI but with getting data ready to use with it. Agentic AI can’t be created without the input of good, clean, reliable data.

Enter Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform, which locates, catalogs, and integrates data from a range of cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments. IDMC also incorporates API management and Master Data Management (MDM), which provides a single, unified view of data from numerous sources across applications. A copilot called Claire GPT enables customers to extract information from the data the vendor prepares. Informatica software also supports extensive management of metadata, a capability that could add granularity and accuracy to Salesforce’s existing offerings.

More About Informatica

Informatica was founded in 1993 and went public in 1999. In 2015, it was taken private by investment fund Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in a transaction valued at about $5.3 billion. Microsoft and Salesforce Ventures also participated in that round. In 2021, Informatica went public again. According to Bloomberg, Permira and CPPIB continue to hold about 57% of the company's shares, and Salesforce also has a stake.

Informatica competes with data management tools from Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, Google, IBM, SAP, and a range of other players. Notably, though, its software also links to the software of many of its competitors. Earlier this year, the vendor announced a strategic partnership with Databricks. All of this could work to Salesforce's advantage in the market.

Agents on the March

The Informatica acquisition could significantly augment Salesforce’s efforts to boost its competitive position in the agentic AI race by streamlining the creation of “digital labor” agents for its CRM apps—meaning AIs that perform tasks that formerly required significant manual and developer operations. Here’s how Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff put it in the press release:

“Together, Salesforce and Informatica will create the most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry. By uniting the power of Data Cloud, MuleSoft, and Tableau with Informatica’s industry-leading, advanced data management capabilities, we will enable autonomous agents to deliver smarter, safer, and more scalable outcomes for every company, and significantly strengthen our position in the $150 billion-plus enterprise data market.”

To parse the above: Data Cloud is Salesforce’s data collection and organization platform, which it says delivers a comprehensive view of data from multiple sources. Informatica’s software will extend the platform’s versatility and support for multiple data sources.

MuleSoft, acquired by Salesforce for about $6.5 billion in 2018, integrates data across multiple sources and supports management of APIs. Informatica also offers API management, which could augment the MuleSoft products.

Tableau, acquired by Salesforce in 2019 for about $15.7 billion (a price exceeded only by the company’s purchase of Slack for $27 billion in 2021), provides a way to visualize data gathered from multiple sources.

Agentforce to the Forefront

Along with the above augmentations, the acquisition of Informatica thrusts Salesforce’s Agentforce software into the spotlight, since that product stands to benefit the most from the addition of Informatica’s wares. Agentforce enables customers to build AI agents to streamline CRM business processes, and it’s considered key to the company’s future.

In Salesforce’s fiscal fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call on Feb. 26, Benioff stressed the strategic importance of Agentforce: “[J]ust 90 days after it went live, we've already had 3,000 paying Agentforce customers who are experiencing unprecedented levels of productivity, efficiency and cost savings,” Benioff said on the call.

The role of Agentforce is stressed in today's press release, which states: "Upon close, Salesforce plans to rapidly integrate Informatica’s technology stack — including data integration, quality, governance, and unified metadata for Agentforce, and a single data pipeline with MDM on Data Cloud — seamlessly embedding this 'system of understanding' into the Salesforce ecosystem."

Not All Rosy

The Informatica purchase will be one of Benioff’s biggest bets on the future direction of Salesforce. His strategy of aggressively pursuing M&A to the tune of about $60 billion over the last decade has drawn criticism from investors and forced Benioff to moderate his approach.

Further, not all of Salesforce's acquisitions have proved successful. Tableau, for instance, failed to meet expectations commensurate with its pricetag, and in 2023, the hammer of Salesforce layoffs dealt it a sound blow.

Informatica has also had its challenges. Some customers have complained in online forums about the platform’s cost and complexity. Still, with over 5,000 customers performing what the vendor claims are 119 trillion-plus cloud transactions with the software per month, Informatica clearly has a reputation for reliability and scalability.

Informatica has also been working hard to "modernize" its sales by switching from on-premises to cloud-based subscription offerings. During the company’s most recent earnings call, management pointed out that Informatica’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) is now 50% comprised of cloud subscriptions, totaling $848 million for the quarter.

Salesforce’s acquisition of Informatica is expected to close about a year from now, at the start of Salesforce’s fiscal 2027. The deal won't be accretive to earnings until a year after that, Salesforce stated.

Futuriom Take: Salesforce’s acquisition of Informatica is well advised. By readying data for use in Agentforce and Data Cloud, Salesforce should enhance its position in deployment of agentic AI and by extension its full roster of CRM applications.