TECHNOLOGY
Salesforce to Acquire Communications Platform Slack
Salesforce, the prominent customer-relationship-management platform, announced Dec. 1 that it had acquired Slack Technologies Inc. Both publicly traded companies are headquartered in San Francisco. The deal is yet to be approved by Slack’s stockholders. However, the boards of directors for Salesforce and Slack have both approved the transaction.
Under terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash per share and 0.776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, which will represent a value of $27.7 billion.
The deal will make Slack, which has clients including Starbucks and Target, as the provider of the interface for the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, said Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s chair and chief executive officer. Slack’s open platform integrates more than 2,400 apps used inside and outside the business world. Benioff said that this deal will help the Salesforce platform serve as a user-friendly way to build and deliver apps.
“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,” Benioff said.
Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and co-founder, said that he would remain as Slack’s chief executive when the company becomes a division of Salesforce.
“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,” Butterfield said. “Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”