Salesforce Agrees to Buy Braze for $5.66 Billion; Braze Shares Jump More Than 50%

Salesforce announced today, Oct. 20, that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Braze, the customer engagement software company, for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value. Holders of Braze Class A common stock will receive $47.50 in cash per share.

That price is a premium of about 58.1% to Braze's Monday close of $30.04. Trading in Braze was halted briefly before the open, and the stock then jumped more than 50%. Salesforce shares fell roughly 1% in Tuesday morning trading after dropping between 2.6% and 3% in premarket.

The terms

Salesforce expects the deal to close in its fiscal 2028, which begins in early February 2027. Closing depends on a vote by Braze shareholders and regulatory approvals.

If Braze walks away, it owes Salesforce a $191.4 million termination fee. If Salesforce abandons the deal, it pays Braze $300 million.

Braze plans to file a preliminary proxy statement on Schedule 14A with the SEC. The companies listed risks including failure to win approvals or the shareholder vote, possible competing offers, and the chance that expected benefits never show up.

Salesforce said it does not expect the deal to change its fiscal 2027 guidance. It has not issued fiscal 2028 guidance.

J.P. Morgan Securities is advising Salesforce. Qatalyst Partners is advising Braze.

What Salesforce is buying

Braze sells software that lets marketers react to customer behavior in real time across mobile apps, websites, email, SMS and WhatsApp. The company has roughly 2,770 customers, including Canva, Dairy Queen, Equinox, Instacart, Urban Outfitters and Venmo.

In its fiscal second quarter, Braze reported revenue of $227.2 million, up 26.2% from $180.1 million a year earlier. Its operating loss narrowed to $18.1 million from $38.8 million.

By comparison, Salesforce reported $11.3 billion in revenue for its second quarter of fiscal 2027, up 11%. Braze is smaller and growing faster, and it is still losing money.

Salesforce says Braze will slot into Marketing Cloud alongside Data 360, Customer 360, Agentforce and SIForce. "Braze was built to turn live customer behavior into personalized engagement at scale," said Patrick Stokes, Salesforce's president of applications and marketing. He said combining it with Salesforce's platform will improve each customer interaction.

Braze CEO Bill Magnuson said the company will keep building as Braze. "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," he said. Magnuson and co-founder Jon Hyman are expected to bring expertise in mobile experiences, data engineering and customer engagement to Marketing Cloud, Salesforce said.

Another acquisition from a company that said it would slow down

This is the latest in a run of Salesforce purchases. The company agreed earlier this year to buy AI agent platform Fin for about $3.6 billion, and it signed an $8 billion deal for Informatica last year.

Axios framed the Braze purchase as an admission that Salesforce's marketing cloud "could use some seeding." It also noted that in 2023 Salesforce dissolved its board M&A committee, partly because of how hard it was to integrate the MuleSoft, Tableau and Slack mega-deals. Axios's summary: "Why build when you can buy?"

Reuters pointed to the pressure behind the buying: investors worry that rapid AI adoption could erode demand for traditional business software. Salesforce is paying cash to add AI-driven personalization tools it has not built to the same level in-house.

What Braze shareholders get

Braze went public in 2021 at $65 per share. The $47.50 offer is well below that, though far above where the stock closed Monday.

For current holders the premium is substantial. Shareholders will decide with their votes whether the board got the best price, and the proxy filing will lay out how the sale process unfolded. The companies themselves flagged the possibility of competing offers as a risk.

No regulatory challenge has been announced. At $5.66 billion the deal is a fraction of the mega-deals Salesforce has done before, but it still needs clearances before closing.

The next concrete step is Braze's preliminary proxy statement with the SEC, which should disclose the background of the negotiations and set up the shareholder vote that stands between the $47.50 offer and a closed deal.