. . World News – United States – Salesforce to acquire Slack workplace chat app for $ 27. 7 billion

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The cloud computing giant Salesforce is acquiring the workplace chat app Slack, the two companies announced on Tuesday. The deal, the rumor of which surfaced last week, is one of the most momentous acquisitions in the business software industry in recent years and the largest salesforce purchase ever made.

Salesforce pays $ 27. According to the press release, 7 billion for Slack. “Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive $ 26. 79 in cash and 0. 0776 Salesforce common shares for each Slack share, which equates to an enterprise value of approx. 27 USD equals. 7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce common stock on Jan.. November 2020 ”, says the announcement.

« Stewart and his team built one of the most popular platforms in enterprise software history with an incredible ecosystem, » said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. “This is a match made in heaven. Salesforce and Slack will work together to shape the future of business software and change the way everyone works in the fully digital world from anywhere. I am very excited to see Slack join Salesforce Ohana after the transaction is complete. ”

“Salesforce started the cloud revolution. Two decades later, we are still using every opportunity to change the way we work. The opportunity we see together is huge, ”said Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack. “As software plays an increasingly important role in the performance of any company, we share the vision of reduced complexity, higher performance and flexibility, and ultimately a higher degree of alignment and organizational agility. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in software history and I can’t wait to get started. ”

Slack has gone from a fast-growing startup founded as a gaming company in 2009 to a major competitor to Microsoft with more than 12 million daily active users in October last year (and probably a lot more, though that Company has done so) and has a market value of nearly $ 25 billion. The company, led by Flickr co-developer Butterfield, started out primarily as an email alternative targeting startups, media companies, and other tech-savvy companies to better manage interoffice communications.

But Butterfield and his team have built Slack into a complete productivity suite with video meeting capabilities, file hosting, IT administration, and all the other features normally offered by large companies. Earlier this year, the company expanded its partnership with IBM to more than 350. 000 employees.

However,

Slack is also facing stiff competition not only from Microsoft, but also from Facebook and other companies that have launched their own versions of Office chat and productivity platforms. The company had lost nearly half of its market value since going public in April 2019 and has failed to make a profit for the past three quarters despite the surge in remote working due to COVID-19. The company had no obvious path to become profitable and no clear path to overcome the increasing pressures from Microsoft teams that made a potential acquisition more likely every quarter.

Salesforce, also a major competitor to Microsoft but in the cloud space, is valued at nearly $ 220 billion and has grown to become one of the largest software companies in the world thanks to its customer relationship management software that enables companies to manage sales online developed.

Both Salesforce and Slack only became more important during the coronavirus pandemic, when companies around the world switched to working remotely and moved significant parts of their business online. In contrast to Slack, which was a rollercoaster ride with inclines and heavy price losses, Salesforce has only expanded its market valuation in the last few months. The share hit an all-time high in September. The collaboration between Salesforce and Slack will enable both platforms to compete better with Microsoft, Oracle and other cloud and corporate companies.

Salesforce, Slack Technologies, Customer Relationship Management, NYSE: CRM, Warehouse