Salesforce buys Braze for $5.66 billion while 5% of its users have upgraded to its AI tiers
Salesforce will pay $47.50 a Braze share in cash, a 58% premium, eight days after its Loops purchase. Braze's four most recent reported quarters sum to less than the $1.5 billion Agentforce already books each year, and the deal changes none of Salesforce's targets.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Salesforce−0.33% — Salesforce, down 0.33 percent today signed a definitive agreement today, October 20, to buy Braze+51.56% — Braze, up 51.56 percent today (Nasdaq: BRZE), the New York customer-engagement platform marketers use to act on customer behavior in real time, for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value 1. Holders of Braze Class A stock get $47.50 a share in cash, a 58% premium to Monday's $30.04 close 2.
Braze surged 51% in premarket trading; Salesforce slipped more than 3% 3. It is the second purchase announced in eight days, after the analytics startup Loops on October 12, which is being folded into Tableau, Salesforce's analytics unit 5.
What $5.66 billion buys
Braze grew revenue 26.2% to $227.2 million in the quarter through July, booked $22 million of non-GAAP operating income, and guided fiscal 2027 to $910–913 million 6. Salesforce grew 10.8% in the same quarter 7. The price is about 6.8 times the $834 million Braze booked across its four quarters to July 31, the sum of its reported quarterly revenues rather than a figure either company states 8. The bill runs about two-thirds of the $8.31 billion of cash Salesforce held on July 31, a balance already down about a fifth in a year 7.
Salesforce is buying the growth rate it no longer generates
- Braze
- Salesforce
Data
| Braze | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 '23 | 33.1% | 11.3% |
| Q4 '23 | 32.7% | 10.8% |
| Q1 '24 | 33.1% | 10.7% |
| Q2 '24 | 26.4% | 8.4% |
| Q3 '24 | 22.7% | 8.3% |
| Q4 '24 | 22.5% | 7.6% |
| Q1 '25 | 19.6% | 7.6% |
| Q2 '25 | 23.8% | 9.8% |
| Q3 '25 | 25.5% | 8.6% |
| Q4 '25 | 27.9% | 12.1% |
| Q1 '26 | 30.2% | 13.3% |
| Q2 '26 | 26.2% | 10.8% |
Scale is the other half of the trade. Braze's last four reported quarters come to under 2% of Salesforce's $43.9 billion of trailing revenue, and roughly half the $1.5 billion of annual recurring revenue that Agentforce, its AI-agent platform, already reports 89.
The $5.66 billion target is smaller than the AI product Salesforce built
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Salesforce (TTM revenue) | $43.9B |
| Agentforce (ARR) | $1.5B |
| Braze (four quarters, summed) | $0.83B |
The bull case, and the number it leaves untouched
Bank of America's+0.31% — Bank of America, up 0.31 percent today Tal Liani double-upgraded Salesforce to Buy on October 12, target $285 from $160, arguing AI will "deepen dependence" on incumbents that house a company's data and workflows 5. The company says Braze's real-time engine will complement all four layers of its architecture: Data 360, Customer 360, Agentforce and SIForce 10.
The announcement moves no numbers: no change to fiscal-2027 guidance, no fiscal-2028 guide, no update to long-term targets 10. The $63 billion fiscal-2030 target implies about 11% compound growth from fiscal 2026's $41.5 billion 9.
Management's own count is the sticking point: 5% of sales-and-service users sit on the premium editions that carry its newest AI features 9. Customers already using its AI agents spend about twice as much a year 9.
What to watch into the print
The fiscal Q3 report, guided to $11.42–11.5 billion after Q2's $11.35 billion, lands before the Braze shareholder vote and the regulatory clearances due ahead of a fiscal-2028 close 94. Two disclosures decide the trade: the premium-tier share, and Agentforce's ARR.
Braze's holders exit at a fixed $47.50 a share; Salesforce's holders fund about two-thirds of the July cash balance and carry the integration risk until the deal closes. The 11% compound growth the $63 billion target implies depends on moving far more than that 5% of users onto the premium tiers 9.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
