Salesforce is making a major play to dominate the AI space by acquiring Informatica for around $8 billion. This deal is all about creating what Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is calling “the most complete, agent-ready data platform in the industry.”
Informatica shareholders will get $25 per share in cash, with the total deal valued at about $8 billion (after accounting for Salesforce’s existing investment).
The agentic AI strategy
The real strategy here is building the ultimate foundation for what they’re calling “agentic AI” – basically, AI agents that can work separately and safely across entire organizations. By combining Salesforce’s platform with Informatica’s data toolkit, which includes data integration, governance, quality control, privacy management, and master data management, they’re creating a unified system where AI agents can operate responsibly at a massive scale.
This isn’t just about getting bigger – it’s about solving one of AI’s most significant challenges: having clean, trustworthy data that AI systems can actually use effectively. With businesses racing to deploy AI everywhere, having darn-solid data management becomes critical. Salesforce is betting this combination will give them the edge they need in the piping hot AI market.
Why data foundation matters
It’s important to note that building enterprise-grade AI isn’t just about having data – it’s about having the right data foundation. That’s what makes this Salesforce-Informatica deal so strategic.
The combination tackles three critical AI challenges. First is transparency – Informatica’s advanced tools track exactly where data comes from and how it changes, which is essential when it comes to auditing and compliance. Second is understanding – Informatica’s rich metadata meshed with Salesforce’s unified data model helps AI agents comprehend what the data means and how it connects. Third is governance – built-in quality controls and policy management make sure that AI works with standardized, accurate, and secure data.
This addresses a major reason why enterprise AI projects often fail: companies focus on sophisticated algorithms while neglecting the data infrastructure that makes those algorithms work effectively in real business settings. Without proper transparency, context, and governance, even the best AI can make decisions based on flawed or inconsistent information.
“Truly autonomous, trustworthy AI agents need the most comprehensive understanding of their data. The combination of Informatica’s advanced catalog and metadata capabilities with our Agentforce platform delivers exactly this,” said Steve Fisher, the president and CTO of Salesforce. “Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing data points to understanding their full context — origin, transformation, quality, and governance. This clarity, from a unified Salesforce and Informatica solution, will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions.”
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