Salesforce Is Close to Acquiring Informatica, Reports

Salesforce is on the brink of snapping up Informatica, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

The latter publication even suggested that the two companies could reach a deal before the end of the week, citing “people familiar with the matter”.

However, the reports didn’t include a rumored price point, with Informatica’s market cap currently sitting pretty at $11BN.

That comes after a positive start to 2024 for the cloud data management player – with its stock rising from under $27 at the beginning of the year to above $38.

Indeed, Informatica is likely benefitting from AI in the enterprise, which gathers momentum as AI test drives – fuelled by the GPT hype – accelerate into AI deployments.

Informatica’s data integration and management platform supports these deployments by allowing companies to pull on, order, and refine their customers’ data.

With such a platform, Salesforce could bolster the existing features within Data Cloud, which fuels the AI models that swarm its Einstein 1 Platform – launched in September 2023.

In addition, Informatica may augment the metadata layer within the Einstein 1 platform. Currently, this ensures that when a company plugs data into one Salesforce app, it becomes available within others. It also allows the CRM giant to update the platform without disrupting existing deployments.

If the deal goes ahead, those Data Cloud and metadata enhancements will likely be Salesforce’s two central focuses, aiding its AI + data + CRM mantra for the future of customer experience.

Salesforce Is On an Acquisition Hot Streak

A deal for Informatica would mark Salesforce’s third acquisition since October 2023 – after its acquisitions of Airkit.ai, the low-/no-code bot-building solution, and Spiff, the compensation management platform.

Yet, the price point is likely much higher for this deal – sitting alongside some of Salesforce’s biggest acquisitions to date.

Those include its mammoth deals for Slack ($27.7BN), Tableau ($15.7BN), and MuleSoft ($6.5BN).

The former had reportedly come in for some criticism from activist investors at the start of 2023 – as Salesforce refocused on its core CRM business amid layoffs.

However, that pivot has seemingly delivered results, with Salesforce stock surging by 95+ percent in 2023 and renewed investor confidence to again take on these lofty acquisitions.

Informatica at a Glance

As suggested, Informatica is a global data integration platform provider. Its hallmark offering extracts, transforms, and channels data from various sources to other systems that rely on it.

In addition, the platform can perform live data integration, which allows this process to happen in real-time as the data is generated.

Other critical capabilities include data management, security, quality, and management features – allowing businesses to ensure their data is accurate, secure, and compliant.

Moreover, the platform is highly scalable, handling many data sources and destinations.

Lastly, it provides many options for customizing data integration processes to meet an organization’s specific needs.

Salesforce already offers similar capabilities via Data Cloud – which leads the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms 2024.

Yet, nowadays, data management is a critical focus for the CRM giant, and extending its lead in this category is perhaps priority number one.

Ryan Nichols, Chief Product Officer of Salesforce Service Cloud, recently suggested as much during a recent interview with CX Today – where he also dived much deeper into the vendor’s Data Cloud strategy.