by Salesforce acquired Informatica for $8 billion in 2025, a potential catalyst for its renewal due to its AI-scale data delivery expertise, following a failed previous acquisition last year.
Salesforce is acquiring data-management software giant Salesforce, a move seen as a strategic move towards agentic AI, amid concerns about its slowing growth. SaaS software may become outdated due to AI agents, according to analysts.
SaaS Killer: Agentic AI?
Salesforce announced in May 2025 that it will buy global data management firm Informatica for $8 billion, a 30% decrease from its previous value. The deal comes amid slumping growth and a macroeconomic backdrop of trade uncertainty and recession risk, prompting corporate tech customers to reconsider IT spending plans, particularly for Salesforce.
Salesforce has shifted its focus to offering easy-to-configure AI agents, similar to its CRM and e-commerce platform, through the acquisition of Informatica. This move is seen as a strategic move to strengthen Salesforce’s Agentforce agentic AI offering.
The Search for Data Ready for AI
Software firms selling AI agents are leveraging them to boost sales, but they require strong data management capabilities to operate effectively. Deutsche Bank’s note to investors suggests that without Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud, the utility of Salesforce AI’s capabilities will be limited.
The relationship between data and software efficacy is well-known, with “garbage in, garbage out” being a common adage. Inadequate data can cause issues in large language models (LLMs), impacting AI agents relying on those models. Tech analyst Joseph Ours argues that corporate data is not AI-ready, as no one has truly AI-ready data yet.
Companies often build databases for operational needs or human-run analytics tools, leading to limited and gap-filled datasets. These databases often contain duplicates, empty fields, old information, and non-standard formats. In the agentic-AI world, bad data can escalate from IT nuisance to major business risk, as Salesforce aims to dominate.
I need data. Perhaps AI Is Needed for Data
Deloitte UK’s Data Risk and Analytics lead, George Johnston, explains that data quality remains a challenge due to four main factors: high data volumes, siloed data, outdated systems, and a lack of data management skills.
The vast array of data formats and sources makes it challenging to manage, clean, and maintain, often requiring resolution of inconsistencies, missing values, and ensuring compatibility.
Acquiring Informatica might transform Salesforce by tackling the difficulties of preserving data quality in the AI era. Salesforce’s IDMC platform, designed for data quality tasks like cleaning, extracting, integrating, cataloging, labeling, and securing, is expected to improve data management significantly.
Google’s CLAIRE AI engine automates data management processes, addressing the intense computational demands of AI agents. A 2024 survey found 90% of data science professionals experience hallucinations in their models, with 93% experiencing issues daily or weekly. Google’s PaLM comes in highest at almost 30%.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce launched Agentforce nine months ago and has closed over 3,000 paid deals. Analysts wonder if the business has lowered pricing in an effort to draw in more customers. In fiscal 2024, Salesforce reported $900 million in AI-related revenue, accounting for just under 3% of total revenue.
Data quality is crucial for the reliability of AI, as it determines the actions an AI agent can take on your behalf. Informatica’s data-management software is expected to be a key component in Salesforce’s strategic AI pivot.
