In a $27.7 billion megadeal, Salesforce has announced it will acquire Slack. Salesforce, a CRM powerhouse, will wade deeper into enterprise social with the purchase. Rumors of the pending deal surfaced earlier, causing Slack’s stock price to spike.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce co-founder and CEO says of the deal: “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”. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield agreed, in his equally excited statement about the deal. Slack allows co-workers to communicate easily, but also facilitates external communication with partners or customers which would be even more useful for Salesforce. Slack entered 2020 with lost value after going public, plus additional lost value after the latest earnings report. So while the takeover is not too surprising, the sale price is.
But, the new deal is beneficial to Salesforce too; it brings the company more on par and potentially in competition with rival Microsoft, whose Teams product has been directly challenging Slack. Microsoft has passed on Slack in the past, making Teams their priority. To learn more about Slack’s company history, and the current acquisition deal, visit here.
