Tech Brief: Salesforce Acquires Slack for $27.7 Billion

Salesforce is officially acquiring enterprise chat and collaboration platform Slack in a deal worth US$ 27.7 billion, making it one of the most consequential and largest acquisitions in recent years and Salesforce's biggest purchase to date.

"Combining Slack with Salesforce Customer 360 will be transformative for customers and the industry," the companies said in an announcement. "The combination will create the operating system for the new way to work, uniquely enabling companies to grow and succeed in the all-digital world."

The acquisition also means a tighter integration of Slack with Salesforce Cloud, with the chat service becoming "the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360."

In a boon year for remote working tools such as Zoom due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Slack has struggled to fully capitalise on the rapid transition due to aggressive competition from the likes of Google Chat/Meet and Microsoft Teams.

Prior to Slack, Salesforce's biggest deals were the US$ 15.3 billion purchase of Tableau last year, followed by the US$ 6.5 billion acquisition of MuleSoft in 2018. The purchase also leapfrogs Microsoft's US$ 27 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. IBM's US$ 34 billion purchase of Red Hat in 2018, however, remains the largest ever in the software industry.