Salesforce has announced a definitive agreement to acquire customer engagement platform Braze for $5.66 billion in cash, marking a major strategic push into artificial intelligence designed to help brands respond to live shopper behavior in real time.

Under the terms of the agreement announced on October 20, Braze shareholders will receive $47.50 per share in cash. This purchase price represents a significant premium of approximately 58% over the stock’s closing price on October 19. Salesforce leadership anticipates that the high-profile transaction will substantially strengthen its core Marketing Cloud business while expanding its broader enterprise AI offerings.

"Braze was built to turn live customer behavior into personalized engagement at scale," said Patrick Stokes, president of applications and marketing at Salesforce, in the official acquisition announcement. "Bringing that capability together with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, CRM, and Data 360 will deliver that wow moment in every customer interaction."

The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and the green light from shareholders. Salesforce expects the deal to officially close during its fiscal year 2028, which spans from February 1, 2027, through January 31, 2028. Furthermore, Salesforce stated that it does not expect the acquisition to have any impact on its fiscal 2027 financial guidance.

The move comes as Salesforce maintains a powerful foothold in North American ecommerce. According to data from Digital Commerce 360, 78 of the Top 2000 online retailers in North America rely on Salesforce as their primary ecommerce platform. Together, these major retailers generated in excess of $192.60 billion in web sales in 2025. The Top 2000 database ranks the largest online retailers across the continent by annual ecommerce revenue.

What Salesforce gains from Braze’s AI capabilities

Headquartered in New York, Braze specializes in sophisticated personalized marketing across mobile applications, websites, email, and various other digital channels. By leveraging real-time customer data alongside advanced artificial intelligence, the platform enables brands to carefully optimize the specific message, delivery timing, and communication channel for every individual customer interaction.

The acquisition brings considerable operational scale to Salesforce’s existing marketing business. Braze’s platform currently serves approximately 2,770 customers globally, including prominent consumer brands such as Urban Outfitters, Instacart, and Canva. Notably, Urban Outfitters is ranked No. 29 in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 2000 database.

In a LinkedIn post published on October 20, Braze co-founder and chief technology officer Jon Hyman shared that the platform successfully engages 9 billion monthly active users across its entire customer base. He also noted that during 2025 alone, Braze handled "about 4.5 trillion messages and other actions to consumers."

A foundational component of the acquisition is BrazeAI, a sophisticated technology suite that combines predictive, generative, and agentic artificial intelligence. According to Braze, these specialized tools are designed to anticipate shifting customer behavior, automatically generate targeted marketing content, and optimize the precise timing, location, and method through which brands reach out to shoppers.

How Salesforce plans to integrate Braze

For Salesforce, acquiring Braze provides a vital operational piece that addresses a historic gap within its product ecosystem. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, told Reuters that the deal provides Salesforce with "a real-time engagement layer that its marketing business has historically lacked."

Salesforce intends to seamlessly connect Braze’s advanced real-time marketing technology with Customer 360, its comprehensive suite of customer data and software applications spanning sales, marketing, commerce, and customer service. The prominent enterprise software provider expects this powerful combination to significantly strengthen Marketing Cloud, the widely adopted tool that businesses use to orchestrate and manage complex marketing campaigns.

By gaining direct access to Salesforce’s expansive customer data repositories, Braze’s technology will empower corporate marketers to dynamically "adapt engagement as customers browse, buy, and use products," according to the official acquisition statement.

In addition, Salesforce plans to have Braze’s AI capabilities work in tandem with Agentforce, its dedicated platform for deploying autonomous AI agents capable of independent decision-making and task execution. Salesforce notes that this synergy will help businesses better coordinate their marketing strategies with backend ecommerce operations, sales pipelines, and customer service workflows.

Meanwhile, Braze CEO and co-founder Bill Magnuson emphasized that Salesforce’s vast technology infrastructure, global reach, and robust partner network will ultimately help the company "bring more of our vision to market sooner." In an October 20 LinkedIn post, Magnuson confirmed that he will remain in his role as CEO and that the company will continue to operate under the Braze brand name.

How retailers are using Braze to drive sales

A number of prominent digital retailers are already reporting measurable improvements in consumer engagement and conversion rates by running campaigns powered by Braze’s technology.

Grove Collaborative, a sustainability-focused online retailer, transitioned to Braze after its legacy marketing platform failed to support real-time personalization effectively. The previous system had experienced a catastrophic technical failure on Thanksgiving Eve, according to a published Braze case study.

By successfully integrating Braze with its Shopify storefront, Grove was able to automate personalized reminders and targeted product recommendations specifically tailored for shoppers who browsed items without completing a purchase. This targeted campaign yielded strong operational metrics, generating a 10% checkout rate, a 41% add-to-cart rate, and a 3% click-through rate, according to internal Braze data.

E.l.f. Beauty Inc. provides another successful retail example. The cosmetics brand partnered with Braze and Stitch to dramatically expand its mobile marketing efforts and deepen engagement with its Beauty Squad loyalty program.

With dedicated support from both companies, e.l.f. expanded its deployment of push notifications and hyper-personalized in-app campaigns designed to encourage customers to return to its proprietary mobile app. Between March and September 2023, the brand’s monthly mobile app usage surged by 125%, according to a separate Braze case study.

The retailer also incorporated push notifications directly into its existing loyalty email communications, reminding Beauty Squad members to redeem valuable rewards before their expiration dates. These proactive measures, supported by Braze’s platform capabilities, contributed directly to a 58% year-over-year increase in loyalty offer redemptions throughout 2024. Within the Digital Commerce 360 Top 2000 database, Grove Collaborative ranks at No. 256, while e.l.f. Beauty holds the No. 328 position.

Salesforce expands AI capabilities through acquisitions

The acquisition of Braze forms part of a broader, aggressive push by Salesforce to rapidly expand its artificial intelligence portfolio through a combination of internal development and strategic corporate buyouts.

This aggressive strategy unfolds as Salesforce’s existing AI-driven business lines experience rapid market adoption and strong financial momentum. During the company’s fiscal second quarter, annual recurring revenue for Agentforce surpassed $1.5 billion, representing a staggering 240% increase year over year. Combined with Data 360, total annual recurring revenue reached $3.9 billion, according to the company’s official earnings results.

Alongside the Braze agreement, Salesforce has executed several other substantial acquisitions over the course of the year. In September, the enterprise software giant completed its $3.6 billion acquisition of Fin, a technology firm that specializes in developing advanced AI agents capable of handling complex customer service inquiries.

That same month, Salesforce acquired Contentful for approximately $1.5 billion to bolster its capacity to deliver hyper-personalized digital customer experiences. More recently, Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, a firm that utilizes specialized AI agents to conduct customer research and analyze qualitative feedback. Financial terms for the Listen Labs transaction were not publicly disclosed.