Slack was founded in 2013, but its origins go back to an online multiplayer game company called Glitch that was founded in 2009. It’s worth noting that Salesforce was interested in Twitter in 2016, the same year that Microsoft was reportedly interested in Slack, but eventually walked away from that deal when shareholders objected, not wanting to deal with the controversial side of the social platform. Quip brought to the SaaS giant a way of socially sharing documents, and when paired with the Slack acquisition gives Salesforce a much more robust social story to tell than its internal option Chatter, an early attempt at enterprise social that never really caught on. Today’s deal comes after Salesforce’s purchase of Quip in 2016 for $750 million. Someone could scoop up Slack before it IPOs What’s more, it also facilitates external communication with customers and partners, something that should be quite useful for a company like Salesforce and its family of offerings. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going,” Butterfield said in a statement.Įvery worker at every company needs to communicate, something that Slack can ably empower. “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. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield was no less effusive than his future boss. 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 in a statement. Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff didn’t mince words on his latest purchase. Rumors of a pending deal surfaced last week, causing Slack’s stock price to spike.

Salesforce, the CRM powerhouse that recently surpassed $20 billion in annual revenue, announced today it is wading deeper into enterprise social by acquiring Slack in a $27.7 billion megadeal.

Salesforce acquisition of slack