Salesforce is in the final stages of negotiations to acquire cloud data-management firm Informatica, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news on Friday. The news of the potential acquisition sparked a flurry of market activity. Shares of Informatica, which has a market capitalization of around $10 billion, dropped 6% following the reports.
A Reuters report said the deal could be announced soon. Bloomberg also reported that the Informatica deal could come within a week. Neither publication provided specifics on the size of a potential transaction. However, analyst firm Bernstein wrote in a report on Sunday that “we believe that investors are not going to be happy and this acquisition could answer for many whether Salesforce can re-accelerate growth on their own.” The firm estimated the potential price tag for Informatica to exceed $11 billion.
“Salesforce in Advanced Talks to Buy Informatica. The deal for data-management software firm would be among Salesforce’s largest if completed,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Salesforce declined to comment on the reports. Informatica didn’t respond to the media’s request for comment.
Should the deal go through, it would mark Salesforce’s most significant acquisition since its monumental $28 billion acquisition of Slack in 2021, a move that reshaped the landscape of enterprise collaboration tools. Before Slack, Salesforce made strategic acquisitions, including the purchases of data visualization firm Tableau for $15.3 billion in 2019 and integration software company MuleSoft for $6.5 billion in 2018.
Interestingly, this potential acquisition comes hot on the heels of reports suggesting that Google’s parent company Alphabet is eyeing a purchase of Salesforce competitor HubSpot, indicating a period of significant consolidation within the tech industry.
Salesforce, boasting a market capitalization of approximately $265 billion, maintains a robust ecosystem of over 12,000 partners. Meanwhile, Informatica, with a market capitalization of about $10 billion, offers a partner program catering to systems integrators, resellers, and various business models, according to sources familiar with the company’s operations.
Informatica, which reentered the public markets in 2021, is currently majority-owned by private equity firm Permira and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), holding a controlling stake of over 75%, as reported by Reuters. This potential acquisition signals a strategic move by Salesforce to further strengthen its position in the cloud data management space and expand its offerings to clients worldwide.
