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Salesforce () has agreed to buy Informatica () in an $8 billion deal as a way to quickly access far more data for its AI efforts, it said Tuesday.

Steve Fisher, president and CTO of Salesforce, pointed out that this acquisition helps customers of both companies: “Truly autonomous, trustworthy AI agents need the most comprehensive understanding of their data. The combination of Informatica’s advanced catalog and metadata capabilities with our Agentforce platform delivers exactly this,”. “Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing data points to understanding their full context — origin, transformation, quality, and governance. This clarity, from a unified Salesforce and Informatica solution, will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions.”

Analysts generally agreed that the deal was a win-win for both companies’ customers, but for very different reasons. 

Salesforce has a strong front-end system but its strategy of strengthening its data back end through a variety of acquisitions over the years has proven ineffective, delivering “messy fragmented data,” said Robert Kramer, VP/principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy.

He explained that the Salesforce data offerings lacked the complete enterprise grade data governance and end-to-end data lifecycle tools offered by Informatica. “Informatica really brings a plethora of things, including enterprise grade data integration, data quality cleansing, and governance,” he said. “The deal is strategic for both sides right now. Salesforce has a strong front end but limited tools for data management, and this fills that in and that is a critical component.”

A lifeline for Informatica

Informatica has had its own struggles, with an ineffective front end, and anemic revenue and market share growth, analysts said. 

“Salesforce recognized the gap in their data governance strategy, especially as it [impacts] their AI strategy,” said Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group. 

But Bickley said, all is not rosy with the pairing, as he anticipates more complexity and potentially price increases for both sets of users.

For Salesforce customers, “it is going to add another layer of purchasing, another SKU from Salesforce, another service you have to purchase. The complexity gets another layer deeper,” Bickley said. “For now, the Salesforce customer is going to have to be swimming in the dark and adjust their spend levels accordingly. They won’t have visibility into how much it will cost. This acquisition is exacerbating an already painful problem.”

Informatica users, he said, “can expect the product to cost more. For those who are already Salesforce customers, though, this will be a net win. Salesforce definitely got the better part of this deal.”

Informatica’s recent lackluster financial performance makes this deal “a rescue ship in this turbulent market,” Bickley said. “[Their] business was kind of stagnant. This threw them a lifeline.”

Most see deal as win-win

Noel Yuhanna, a VP/principal analyst at Forrester, also said that he saw the move as a win-win.

“For Salesforce customers, this represents a major advancement. They can now seamlessly access and leverage all types of customer data—whether housed within Salesforce or external systems—in real time. This enhanced capability establishes a unified customer data fabric, delivering actionable insights across every channel and touchpoint,” Yuhanna said. “Critically, it accelerates Salesforce’s ability to deploy agentic AI, enabling low-code, low-maintenance AI that reduces complexity and dramatically shortens time to value.”

For Informatica customers, Yuhanna said, “the opportunity is equally appealing. This acquisition unlocks a faster path to agentic AI workloads, backed by the reach and power of the Salesforce ecosystem. As data management evolves, intelligent agents will automate core functions, turning traditionally time-consuming processes like data ingestion, integration, and pipeline orchestration into self-operating data workflows.”

“Tasks that once took days—or even weeks— will be executed with little to no human intervention,” Yuhanna said. “With a unified data, AI, and analytics platform, Informatica customers will benefit from accelerated innovation, greater operational agility, and significantly enhanced returns on their data investments.”

Rebecca Wettemann, a principal with analyst firm Valoir, also applauded the deal.

“This will be welcome news for Salesforce customers that have a lot of data outside Salesforce that they need to train and tune for AI efforts. While Data Cloud had some capabilities for mapping and harmonizing non-CRM data, Informatica is really the Switzerland of data management and will make it easier for customers wanting to leverage Agentforce to bring in and manage outside data,” Wettemann said, noting that the overlap between the customer bases will help customers with vendor management and let them negotiate better volume deals for technology such as AI agents.

The on-prem problem

However, Info-Tech’s Bickley pointed out that this move could be problematic for Informatica users who have a substantial on premises presence, typically due to vertical or geographic circumstances. 

The problem is that Bickley sees Salesforce having little to no interest in existing on-prem, and as a result they will do whatever they can, including limiting on-prem support and curtailing features for those environments, to fully migrate those users to the cloud.

“I suspect that Salesforce will accelerate end-of-life [for Informatica on-prem offerings]. Salesforce doesn’t have an interest in managing on-prem,” Bickley said. 

But market dynamics will make it difficult for IT executives with substantial on-prem operations to know what to do about it. 

One reaction will be to “lock in renewals” for Informatica on-prem offerings before the deal is finalized, Bickley said, but he added that being in an environment that Salesforce doesn’t want to support may be unattractive. “You definitely want to avail yourself of what is on the market” other than Informatica.

But, Bickley added, it will be difficult for enterprises to find many viable alternative vendors willing to commit to long-term on-prem support. Such vendors “are few and far between,” he said.

Bickley said that many enterprise IT execs will choose to stay on-prem “and take their chances with support. This migration to the cloud is almost a tsunami now. For 90% of customers, migration to the cloud is going to be forced on them. And if there is an on-prem product that is supported [by Salesforce], it will be devoid of new product features.”

Forrester’s Yuhanna vehemently disagreed on the on-prem issue. He argued that he sees Salesforce as more likely to change its tune and embrace on-prem, leveraging those new capabilities from Informatica. 

“Some 80% of financial is not sitting in the cloud. There are more than 10,000 mainframes on the planet. Now Salesforce can tap into that via Informatica,” Yuhanna said. “This is an opportunity. On-prem is not going to go away anytime soon. Look at healthcare—all these guys are on-prem. This opens the door for Salesforce.”

Salesforce already owned a stake in Informatica, and the two companies have been discussing a full merger for more than a year The deal has already been approved by both companies’ boards of directors and by a majority of Informatica shareholders, and it is expected to close early in 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.