Singapore – Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire customer engagement platform Braze for approximately US$5.66 billion in enterprise value, the company announced on 20 October.
Under the terms of the deal, holders of Braze Class A common stock will receive US$47.50 in cash per share.
The acquisition would bring Braze’s real-time, event-streaming technology into Salesforce’s customer engagement portfolio. According to Salesforce, the architecture is optimised for high-volume, real-time business-to-consumer engagement.
Braze says its platform continuously updates customer profiles and adapts customer journeys, powering trillions of messages and journey actions each year. It coordinates personalised experiences across mobile apps, websites, email, SMS and WhatsApp.
Alongside the core platform, Braze offers BrazeAI, which applies AI-powered optimisation to content, offers, channels and timing. Salesforce said these tools help marketers make each interaction more relevant.
Once the transaction closes, Salesforce expects Braze’s real-time engagement and AI decisioning capabilities to complement all four layers of its architecture: Data 360, Customer 360, Agentforce and SIForce.
Within Customer 360, Braze is expected to strengthen Marketing Cloud’s cross-channel personalisation at the scale needed to reach hundreds of millions of people.
Salesforce framed the deal around personalised engagement at scale. “Every interaction is an opportunity to wow your customers,” said Patrick Stokes, President, Applications and Marketing, Salesforce.
“Most of that wow comes from knowing your customer, and responding at just the right moment. Braze was built to turn live customer behavior into personalized engagement at scale. Bringing that capability together with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, CRM, and Data 360 will deliver that wow moment in every customer interaction,” Stokes added.
Salesforce also pointed to a shift in marketing technology. It said AI is raising the bar for marketers, who now need agentic solutions that can understand customers, make decisions and act in real time.
The company said it is pursuing that shift through organic innovation and through acquisitions that meet its M&A framework. Those standards cover advancing customer success, fitting its strategy, accelerating innovation and creating long-term value.
Salesforce outlined three areas where the combined offering would help businesses. The first is acting on customer behaviour in real time, with Braze’s event-streaming architecture turning live customer signals and data from cloud data warehouses and other platforms into personalised messages and coordinated journeys.
The second is delivering experiences across more channels. Braze’s mobile and app capabilities, including in-app messages, personalised content feeds and live updates, would work alongside email, web and messaging channels.
The third is more intelligent personalisation. Braze’s AI decisioning, combined with Salesforce’s customer context and Agentforce, would connect marketing with the wider customer relationship across commerce, sales and service, according to Salesforce.
Braze’s leadership also addressed the deal’s direction. Its chief executive said the company would keep building under its own name.“Braze was built on the conviction that marketers and their creativity are a brand’s ultimate competitive advantage,” said Bill Magnuson, CEO and Co-Founder of Braze.
“This past year we shipped at the fastest pace in our history, and BrazeAI is helping marketers get their best ideas live faster. Salesforce shares our commitment to marketers, and we’ll continue building as Braze and investing in the Braze community of customers and partners who built this company with us. Salesforce’s platform will help us innovate faster and together we’ll help marketers around the world build deeper, more lasting relationships with their customers,” Magnuson concluded.
Salesforce said the two companies also share an open, composable approach that gives customers flexibility across the data, tools and partners they rely on. It added that the capabilities would advance its vision for a more complete Customer 360 across high-volume B2C experiences.
