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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSalesforce Inc. has agreed to acquire Informatica Inc. for about $8 billion, barely a year after an earlier effort fell through.
Informatica shareholders are set to receive $25 in cash per share, according to a statement on Tuesday. Salesforce said it expects the deal to close early in its fiscal year 2027. The company plans to fund the transaction through a combination of cash and new debt.
Informatica, which helps customers manage their data in the cloud, has long been a potential takeover target. San Francisco-based Salesforce held talks to buy the company just over a year ago, Bloomberg News reported at the time. The talks cooled with the parties struggling to agree to terms. Bloomberg was first to report on Friday that Salesforce and Informatica were back in advanced talks.
Informatica competes against Salesforce’s MuleSoft. Its takeover is set to drive further consolidation in the software-as-a-service industry and may attract regulatory scrutiny.
Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud and Business Technology operations are based in Indianapolis, where it employs about 2,000 people.
“Our acquisition strategy is methodical, patient, and decisive,” Robin Washington, Salesforce’s president and chief operating and financial officer, said in the statement. “This proposed acquisition will be a key enabler for Salesforce’s next phase of AI-driven growth—and we will move quickly to integrate their capabilities.”
Shares of Informatica jumped 5.8% in premarket trading on Tuesday. Salesforce’s stock gained about 1%. Informatica’s stock was down 13% this year through Friday’s close, giving the company a market value of $6.8 billion. The Redwood City, California-based company has about $1.9 billion in total debt, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Cloud Software Group, formerly known as Citrix Systems Inc., had been interested in acquiring Informatica, Bloomberg News reported.
The deal is one of Salesforce’s biggest-ever acquisitions. It could be strategic given the intensifying competition in the market for artificial intelligence-driven databases, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sunil Rajgopal wrote in a note on Friday. But overlap between Informatica and Salesforce’s MuleSoft unit could attract regulatory scrutiny, Rajgopal wrote.
Informatica was taken private in 2015 by Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in a $5.3 billion transaction. The company went public again in 2021. Permira, with almost 32% of Informatica’s shares, remains the company’s largest stockholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. CPPIB owns about 25% of the shares.
JPMorgan Securities LLC served as financial advisor to Salesforce, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Morrison & Foerster LLP were legal counsel. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC was the exclusive financial advisor to Informatica, and Latham & Watkins LLP and Fenwick & West LLP were its legal counsel.
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