Salesforce reportedly held talks to buy Slack, which could help Slack stand up to Microsoft

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Salesforce might throw its weight behind communication platform Slack.

Slack on iPhone
Slack on iPhone (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Salesforce reportedly held talks to purchase communication platform Slack.
  • The deal could potentially be worth tens of billions of dollars.
  • Slack being purchased by Salesforce could help it compete more with Microsoft.

Cloud computing giant Salesforce is reportedly interested in purchasing Slack (via CNBC). A Dow Jones report (opens in new tab) states that Salesforce has been in talks with Slack and that a potential deal would "likely value Slack at more than its current market capitalization of $17 billion." The talks appear to be in early stages and are subject to change or fall through entirely.

Slack shares skyrocketed following reports of interest from Salesforce. Based on Slack's share value, the company is valued at roughly $20.8 billion. As noted by TechCrunch, Slack's share value has a tendency to fluctuate.

Salesforce has made some big purchases in recent years, including a $6.5 billion acquisition of MuleSoft in 2018 and a $15.3 billion purchase of Tableau in 2019. A potential purchase of Slack would likely be more than either of those past acquisitions by a sizeable margin.

The possibility of a move involving Slack and Salesforce could affect Microsoft significantly. Microsoft's cloud computing efforts compete with Salesforce. Microsoft Teams also goes head-to-head against Slack, even if the Slack CEO doesn't think so. There's so much overlap, in fact, that Microsoft was reportedly interested in purchasing both Salesforce and Slack at different times.

It's unclear at this what a potential acquisition would look like, but the combination of the Salesforce and Slack customer base would be sizeable. Salesforce and Slack both have strong footholds with enterprises. If Slack was acquired by Salesforce, it could put more weight behind the communication platform.

Neither Salesforce nor Slack have shared statements on the reports of a potential acquisition.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott

Sean Endicott is the news writer for Windows Central. If it runs Windows, is made by Microsoft, or has anything to do with either, he's on it. Sean's been with Windows Central since 2017 and is also our resident app expert. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.
2 Comments
  • I think you'll find it is Dynamics 365 that competes with Salesforce (rather than Azure). Azure is more of an AWS competitor.
  • There's a number problem here: If market cap is $17B then company can't be valued by share price at $20.8B. That is the definition of market cap. They are the same thing and therefore must be the same number. This is interesting. As RebelMagpie wrote, MS Dynamics competes with Salesforce. If Salesforce adds a communication package like Slack, I'd be very, very curious to see how MS responds. Right now, there's not very good integration (in my opinion) between Dynamics and Teams, except perhaps via Graph and Power BI for data review and presentation in a Teams tab. I wonder if this move would encourage MS to improve the integration between the Dynamics and Teams. Specifically, I'd like to see better integration between the CRM aspects of Dynamics and Guest access to Teams (for communication with prospects and customers) and also integration between Dynamics ticket tracking and Planner/Teams for the internal support ticket tracking many currently use Jira and Slack to do. MS has all the pieces, they just don't play easily together as nicely as tools from unrelated companies Slack and Atlassian (owner of Jira). MS just needs to make its tools play nicely together, and it would be an amazing toolset.