Salesforce Is Preparing to Acquire Slack for More Than $17 Billion
Published on November 26, 2020
- Salesforce is reportedly in advanced talks with Slack, readying to agree on an acquisition.
- This news has already brought turbulence in the space, with Microsoft losing its foothold.
- Salesforce is growing aggressively through a series of acquisitions, but Slack will be a record-breaking one.
According to rumors in the industry that are confirmed from multiple sources, Salesforce is in advanced talks to acquire Slack in a deal that would place the popular business communication platform’s value higher than its current market cap of $17 billion. The deal’s negotiation is allegedly going smoothly, and the first official announcements could be out as soon as next week.
In response to this news, Slack shares soared yesterday, recording a steep 37.59% climb.
Salesforce has been actively expanding and complementing its enterprise solutions through acquisitions for quite a while now, as they welcomed MuleSoft to their family for $6.5 billion in 2018. Last year, they spent $15.3 billion to acquire the data visualization expert Tableau. If the deal with Slack goes through, it will be the largest in Salesforce’s history - and maybe the most important one too.
Slack is a proprietary business communication platform that plays in a space where fierce competition comes from every direction, but they have managed to keep the crown for years now. The product enables teams to join virtual workspaces, organize their communications neatly, set up private or public channels, enjoy a wide range of integrations with other products, and automate processes with the Slack API. It’s a complete and comprehensive solution that would empower Salesforce greatly.
The news comes as somewhat of a shock to other cloud service providers who have been competing with both Salesforce and Slack, like Microsoft, for example. Microsoft had actually flirted with the idea of acquiring Slack back in 2016, and reports then mentioned a figure of around $8 billion. As no agreement was reached then, Microsoft proceeded to develop and introduce “Teams” in the market, essentially becoming Slack’s biggest competitor.
Former Salesforce executive Anshu Sharma, who is currently the CEO of Skyflow, has shared the following comment on the rumored acquisition with us: