Salesforce to buy Slack for $27.7 bln

Salesforce will buy Slack for $27.7 billion in what will be one of the biggest deals in the software industry.

Ari Levy from CNBC reported:

Salesforce is making the biggest acquisition in its 21-year history. The company announced on Tuesday that it’s buying chat software developer Slack for over $27 billion.

Through a combination of cash and stock, Salesforce is purchasing Slack for $26.79 a share and .0776 shares of Salesforce, according to a statement. That comes to about $45.86 a share. Prior to initial reports of a deal last week, which led to a 38% pop in Slack’s shares, the stock was trading at under $30.

Aaron Tilley from the Wall Street Journal wrote:

The combination also brings together two of the tech industry’s highest profile CEOs—people who have made a career of taking on Silicon Valley icons. Mr. Benioff has positioned himself as a prominent voice in U.S. business, using venues such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to champion causes and burnish his profile. He set up Salesforce with a pledge of corporate giving and bought himself an even larger platform with his acquisition of Time Magazine two years ago.

The AP’s Michael Liedtke and Matt O’Brien wrote:

Salesforce’s flamboyant founder and CEO Marc Benioff hailed the “cloud computing” concept as the wave of the future to much derision initially.

But software as a service has become an industry standard that has turned into a gold mine for longtime software makers. Microsoft for one has developed its own thriving online suite of services, known as Office 365, which includes a Teams chatting service that includes many of the same features as Slack’s 6-year-old application.