Salesforce said it reached an agreement to acquire customer engagement platform Braze in an all-cash transaction valued at about $5.66 billion. If the transaction is completed, investors owning Braze's Class A common shares would be paid $47.50 in cash for each share.
Closing is targeted for Salesforce's fiscal 2028, and will require shareholder votes and regulatory sign-offs. After the announcement, Salesforce shares were down roughly 1% Tuesday morning. Braze, which ended Monday at $30.04, spiked more than 50% Tuesday following a short premarket trading pause.
Braze develops artificial intelligence marketing tools that help manage customer data and messaging. "Salesforce shares our commitment to marketers, and we'll continue building as Braze and investing in the Braze community of customers and partners who built this company with us," said Bill Magnuson, Braze's CEO. "Salesforce's platform will help us innovate faster and together we'll help marketers around the world build deeper, more lasting relationships with their customers."
Earlier this year, Salesforce announced a roughly $3.6 billion purchase of Fin, an AI customer service platform, aiming to bolster agentic AI for large organizations. August saw Salesforce and Anthropic expand their partnership, debuting a plugin called "Claudeforce" with pre-built sales skills to help salespeople compose emails, update records and more using Anthropic's model.
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Two things to watch: timing and focus. The transaction is slated for fiscal 2028 and is contingent on approvals, so the path to closing is long. And it fits into Salesforce's steady drumbeat of AI-related moves, from the planned Fin acquisition to the Anthropic tie-up, alongside a market reaction that saw Salesforce dip and Braze surge on the news.
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