Will Salesforce Make a Huge AI Acquisition in the Next Few Years?
In January 2023, Salesforce officially disbanded its M&A committee. This led some to believe that the company was no longer interested in making big acquisitions. However, in June 2023, Salesforce launched a $500 million AI Fund and invested $200 million in Hugging Face, a leading AI startup.
To end 2023, they also made 2 acquisitions - Airkit, an AI-based Agent that can interact directly with your customers, offering a boost to Commerce Cloud capabilities; Spiff, a commission management platform and non-AI startup to bolster core Sales Cloud features.
Acquisitions is how Salesforce stays ahead. So no, they're not backing down.
First, AI is growing crazy fast. There's no denying it's the tech of the future. Salesforce wants to be at the forefront of this trend, and acquiring an AI company would give it access to cutting-edge technology and talent, which they can use for their own AI-led products within Einstein GPT.
Second, Salesforce has a history of making big acquisitions to accelerate its growth. In recent years, it's acquired companies like MuleSoft, Tableau, and Slack. These acquisitions have helped Salesforce expand into new markets and add new capabilities to its product portfolio. An acquisition in the AI space could help Salesforce do the same.
Finally, Salesforce is facing increasing competition from other tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon. These companies are also investing heavily in AI, and they are not afraid to make big acquisitions. Salesforce needs to keep pace with its competitors, and acquiring an AI company could be one way to do that.
Here is a list of the 10 AI startups that Salesforce has invested in so far in 2023:
- Protect AI ($35 million Series A)
- Sylvera ($50 million Series B)
- Pano AI ($17 million Series A)
- Typeface ($100 million Series B)
- Runway ($141 million Series C)
- Anthropic ($400 million Series C)
- Simpplr ($70 million Series C)
- Cohere ($270 million Series C)
- Hearth AI (Seed)
- Faros AI ($20 million Series A)
These startup investments are how they keep a pulse on innovation.
And if AI is the future (it is), Salesforce will need to make a move at some point.It’s just a matter of time.
