What Salesforce’s $8B acquisition of Informatica means for enterprise data and AI

Salesforce is making a big bid to become a much larger player in the enterprise space, announcing today an $8B acquisition of Informatica. The move will bring together two large, established enterprise software providers with decades of real-world experience.

Informatica was founded in 1993 as an enterprise data-focused vendor and an early pioneer in the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) market. As technology cycles have changed over the last 25 years, so too has Informatica, moving to cloud and SaaS and more recently embracing generative AI. Just last week, at the company’s Informatica World, it announced a series of new agentic AI offerings designed to help improve enterprise data management and operations.

By acquiring Informatica, Salesforce aims to enhance its trusted data foundation for deploying agentic AI. The combination will create a unified architecture enabling AI agents to operate safely, responsibly and at scale across enterprises by integrating:

Informatica’s rich data catalog, integration, governance, quality, privacy and Master Data Management (MDM) capabilities.

Salesforce’s platform includes Data Cloud, Agentforce, Tableau, MuleSoft and Customer 360.

“I’m excited to begin this new journey with Salesforce where the combination of Informatica’s rich data catalog, data integration, governance, quality and privacy, metadata management and Master Data Management (MDM) services with the Salesforce platform upon close of the transaction will establish a unified architecture for agentic AI – enabling AI agents to operate safely, responsibly and at scale, across the modern enterprise,” Amit Walia, CEO of Informatica wrote in LinkedIn post.

What another big deal means for Salesforce and its enterprise customers

Salesforce has been no stranger to large acquisitions. 

In 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack Technologies for a staggering $28 billion. In 2019, Salesforce acquired data analytics platform Tableau for $16 billion. A year earlier, in 2018, Salesforce acquired MuleSoft, bolstering its enterprise software integration capabilities. All of those acquisitions have worked out well for Salesforce, with Tableau, Slack and Mulesoft growing and expanding.

According to Forrester Analyst Noel Yuhanna, Salesforce’s acquisition of Informatica fills a gap in its data management capabilities.

“The acquisition markedly elevates Salesforce’s position across all critical dimensions of modern data management, including data integration, ingestion, pipelines, master data management (MDM), metadata management, transformation, preparation, quality and governance in the cloud,” Yuhanna told VentureBeat. “These capabilities are no longer optional—they are foundational for building an AI-ready enterprise, especially as the industry accelerates toward agentic AI.”

To fully realize AI’s promise, Yuhanna said that vendor solutions must tightly integrate data and AI as two sides of the same coin. In his view, this acquisition strengthens Salesforce’s ability to do just that, laying the groundwork for next-generation data that can power intelligent, autonomous and personalized experiences at scale to support AI use cases.

“Crucially, this positions Salesforce to deliver a unified customer data fabric, enabling a truly end-to-end platform for data, AI and analytics, tailored to customer-centric use cases,” Yuhanna said. “Real-time data integration across diverse sources is becoming critical for advanced customer engagement, and this move brings Salesforce much closer to that vision.”

Salesforce Informatica deal is (mostly) about agentic AI

While data has long been the foundation of Informatica’s technology, its intersection with agentic AI makes it attractive to Salesforce.

Hyoun Park, CEO and Chief Analyst at Amalgam Insights, told VentureBeat that the Informatica acquisition has been rumored for over a year, with a credible expectation last year of an $11 billion bid.

“From a practical perspective, the rush towards agentic AI requires any credible player in the space to manage data, workflows, integration and models as well as the agents and to be a strong IT partner,” Park said. “The Informatica acquisition goes hand-in-hand with Salesforce’s efforts towards improving IT management capabilities and going head to head against ServiceNow and IT specialists such as Boomi in the agent space.”

Park noted that there is some overlap with the MuleSoft capabilities Salesforce already has in its portfolio. That said, he emphasized that Informatica’s capabilities in data management, including master data management, data catalog and data security, are both more updated and more comprehensive.

The data components that make enterprise agentic AI real

Data isn’t just about storing bits of content. When it comes to agentic AI it’s a whole lot more complex.

“A successful agent strategy depends on the integration of three domains: models, applications and data,” Kevin Petrie, vice president of research at BARC told VentureBeat. “Salesforce gains significant strength in the data realm, especially metadata and cataloging, through this acquisition.”

Petrie noted that Salesforce is already invested in the application realm through its CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Mulesoft offerings. Those capabilities are already being integrated into Salesforce’s agentic AI workflows, focusing on customer-related data.

“However, Informatica provides extensive value in the data management realm outside agentic workflows and customer related data,” Petrie said. “To realize the full value of this acquisition, I believe Salesforce will need to give the Informatica unit sufficient autonomy to continue to provide and extend its broad data management capabilities to its existing customers.”

What it all means for enterprise users

So, what does the acquisition mean for both Salesforce and Informatica enterprise customers?

Forrester’s Yuhanna sees the acquisition as a major advancement for Salesforce customers. He noted that Salesforce customers will be able to seamlessly access and leverage all types of customer data, whether housed within Salesforce or external systems, all in real time. It represents a unified customer data fabric that can deliver actionable insights across every channel and touchpoint. 

“Critically, it accelerates Salesforce’s ability to deploy agentic AI, enabling low-code, low-maintenance AI solutions that reduce complexity and dramatically shorten time to value,” Yuhanna said. “With a fully integrated data management foundation, Salesforce customers can expect faster, more innovative, and more personalized customer experiences at scale.”

The opportunity is equally appealing for Informatica customers. In Yuhanna’s view, this acquisition unlocks a faster path to agentic AI workloads, backed by the reach and power of the Salesforce ecosystem. As data management evolves, intelligent agents will automate core functions, turning traditionally time-consuming processes like data ingestion, integration, and pipeline orchestration into self-operating data workflows. Tasks that once took days or weeks will be executed with zero to little human intervention. 

“With a unified data, AI, and analytics platform, Informatica customers will benefit from accelerated innovation, greater operational agility, and significantly enhanced returns on their data investments,” he said.