Salesforce Paid $27.7 Billion for Slack. The Real Payoff May Be AI
Salesforce paid $27.7 billion for Slack at the height of the SaaS boom. Five years later, the deal looks very different.
When Salesforce announced the acquisition in December 2020, Marc Benioff envisioned Slack as the "operating system for the new way to work." But turning that vision into value proved far more difficult than signing the deal.
Salesforce was paying roughly 27x Slack's forward revenue run rate for a company still reporting significant GAAP operating losses. About $21.1 billion of the purchase price would ultimately be allocated to goodwill. Then came the harder part…
The skinny
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