Salesforce has reached an agreement with Slack for an acquisition. The CRM software maker buys the chat service, which is particularly popular in the corporate market, for $ 27.7 billion.
Salesforce wants to combine Slack with the Customer 360 platform, the company writes when announcing the acquisition. Customer 360 is Salesforce software intended to create an overview of customer data. Slack will be deeply integrated within the platform and serve as the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360.
Slack will also continue to exist as a separate chat platform that is currently used by many companies. According to Salesforce, Slack will be able to expand further into the enterprise market after the acquisition. Slack will become a Salesforce business and current CEO Stewart Butterfield will continue to do so.
The boards of directors of both Salesforce and Slack have approved the acquisition plans. The companies expect the transaction to close in the second quarter of next year, subject to regulatory approval.
Slack had sales of $ 234.5 million in the quarter . That is an increase of 39 percent compared to a year earlier. The chat service has 1080 large customers with a turnover of more than $ 100,000 per twelve months. In total there are 142,000 paying customers.