Key Takeaways
- Salesforce agreed to buy Braze for about $5.66 billion and voice AI company Cresta within two weeks, adding to a 2026 run that includes Fin and Contentful.
- Second-quarter revenue rose 11% to $11.3 billion, but Informatica contributed $456 million, and slightly more than 4 points of third-quarter growth guidance comes from it.
- ServiceNow’s revenue grew 20.5% last quarter, close to double Salesforce’s pace, so each new Salesforce deal reads as bought growth.
- Salesforce reports on December 2, and investors will watch whether cRPO holds near 14% and organic growth improves beneath the acquired revenue.
Salesforce keeps shopping.
On October 20, Salesforce (CRM) agreed to buy Braze (BRZE) for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value, or $47.50 per share in cash. The price was roughly a 58% premium to Braze’s last close, and Salesforce shares dipped on the news.
Thirteen days later, it signed a deal for Cresta, a voice AI company whose agents answer customer calls for Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines. Salesforce did not disclose terms.
Meanwhile, ServiceNow (NOW) just grew third-quarter subscription revenue 21%. Salesforce is growing at roughly half that pace, so investors want to know how much of its growth is now bought.
Two deals in two weeks
Braze lets brands message customers in real time across apps, email, SMS and WhatsApp. It will join Marketing Cloud, Data 360 and Agentforce, while Cresta’s voice agents move into Service Cloud.
Kishan Chetan, who runs Agentforce and Service Cloud, said in the deal announcement that “voice is where service is hardest to get right.”
These two deals extend a busy year:
- Fin, an AI service agent, for about $3.6 billion, announced in June
- Contentful, a content platform, also announced in June
- Braze, which should close in fiscal 2028 and carries a $300 million termination fee for Salesforce
Neither Braze nor Cresta changes the fiscal 2027 outlook. Still, the deals land on a top line that was already getting outside help…
Second-quarter revenue rose 11% to $11.3 billion, and Informatica contributed $456 million of that.
Agentforce is the organic case
The homegrown AI story is real, though still small.
Agentforce ARR topped $1.5 billion in the second quarter, up more than 240%. Including Data 360, AI and data ARR reached nearly $3.9 billion.
cRPO rose 14% to $33.5 billion, and Salesforce raised its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook to $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion. Marc Benioff called it “one of our best quarters ever,” and the stock jumped 21.6% the next day, its biggest gain in six years.
Yet $200 million of the constant currency guidance raise came from Contentful and Fin, versus $100 million of organic upside.
How does that pace stack up against ServiceNow?
ServiceNow’s revenue grew 20.5% last quarter, close to double Salesforce’s 11%. That gap is why every Salesforce acquisition now gets read as a stand-in for organic growth.
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Buying growth has a cost
Third-quarter guidance calls for revenue of $11.42 billion to $11.5 billion, up 11% to 12%. Informatica supplies slightly more than 4 points of that growth.
Profitability is holding up. Salesforce kept its fiscal 2027 non-GAAP operating margin target at 34.3%, and second-quarter free cash flow rose 81% to $1.1 billion.
However, full-year free cash flow growth guidance sits at only 4% to 5%. The balance sheet is also carrying more weight, with a $25 billion accelerated buyback due to settle in October and several cash deals still pending…
Braze alone will add a $5.66 billion cash commitment once it closes.
My take: Salesforce is using its cash flow to buy capabilities it was slow to build, and the targets fit. Braze fills a real gap in Marketing Cloud, and Cresta gives Service Cloud a voice agent to pair with Fin. But stacking deals makes organic growth harder to see, and that uncertainty is what the market is pricing. I’d want Agentforce to do more of the lifting before paying up.
Salesforce reports on December 2 after the close. Watch whether cRPO holds near 14% and whether organic growth improves beneath the acquired revenue.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
