Salesforce, the global leader in CRM on Tuesday announced that it is acquiring chat software developer Slack Technologies in a cash and stock deal worth $27.7 billion. The acquisition is by far the largest in the 21-year history of Salesforce.
Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share.
According to Salesforce, the combination of Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry. It will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world.
Slack will become the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360 and will be “deeply integrated” into every Salesforce Cloud, Salesforce announced. As the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360, Slack will transform how people communicate, collaborate and take action on customer information across Salesforce as well as information from all of their other business apps and systems to be more productive, make smarter, faster decisions and create connected customer experiences.
Together, Salesforce and Slack will create the most extensive open ecosystem of apps and workflows for business and empower millions of developers to build the next generation of apps, with clicks not code.
“Stewart and his team have built one of the most beloved platforms in enterprise software history, with an incredible ecosystem around it,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes.”
Talking regarding the acquisition, Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Co-Founder said, “As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organizational agility. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”
The deal is anticipated to close in the second quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2022, subject to approval by the Slack stockholders, the receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Salesforce’s acquisition sets up a face-off with Microsoft and its Teams platform, as it has been posing a threat to the company’s main products.
“For Benioff, this is all about Microsoft,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said of Tuesday’s deal. “It’s just clear Microsoft is moving further and further away from Salesforce when it comes to the cloud wars.”
It would be interesting to see how the Salesforce-Slack deal wins users and customers and convince them to switch to Salesforce from Microsoft.
