Salesforce buys Braze for $5.66B: what Braze customers should ask now

Salesforce has agreed to buy Braze, the customer engagement platform used by Canva, Instacart, Venmo and about 2,770 other customers, for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value. Braze shareholders get $47.50 a share in cash, about 58% above Braze's $30.04 close the day before. The two companies announced the deal on October 20.

The deal needs a vote of Braze shareholders and regulatory approval, and Salesforce expects it to close in its fiscal 2028. That year runs from February 1, 2027 to January 31, 2028, so closing could be anywhere from about three to 15 months away. Until then Braze stays an independent public company, CMSWire notes. For a marketing or IT team with a Braze contract, the next renewal is likely to be signed before anyone knows what the combined product looks like.

What is settled

Braze will sit under Customer 360, where Salesforce expects it to improve Marketing Cloud's "cross-channel personalization," the release says. Techzine reports that Marketing Cloud is now sold as Agentforce Marketing and already offers functionality similar to Braze's. Salesforce's deck for investors says the deal "Complements and extends Salesforce's Marketing products" and gives Braze access to Salesforce's global distribution.

Braze CEO Bill Magnuson says in the release that "we'll continue building as Braze" and keep investing in its customers and partners. Techzine reports Braze will keep operating as a separate brand. Salesforce's own release does not say that.

Both companies say they back an "open, composable approach," which matters to Braze customers whose customer data lives outside Salesforce. Techzine notes that today Braze reaches Salesforce data only through integrations or APIs.

What is not

Salesforce has not published a combined roadmap and has not said whether pricing or packaging will change, CMSWire reports. The release is silent on existing Braze contracts, and on whether Braze runs as a standalone product after closing.

Salesforce has folded bought products into its own clouds before. CMSWire notes that ExactTarget, bought for about $2.5 billion in 2013, became the base of Marketing Cloud, and Demandware became Commerce Cloud. The Braze price is more than double the ExactTarget price.

There is also a stack of new Braze products to watch. At its Forge conference from September 28 to 30, Braze launched 25 products, and four are in beta, per CMSWire: Agentic Standards, Conversational Agents, Decisioning Studio Go and Operator Connect. Whether those reach general availability on Braze's original plan is now a question for Salesforce.

Markup AI's VP of marketing, Holly Enneking, told CMSWire her main worry: can Salesforce "preserve the focus that made Braze competitive"?

Who is buying

Braze is growing. Its revenue was $227.2 million last quarter, up 26% on a year earlier, SiliconANGLE reports. Salesforce will pay cash from its balance sheet, its deck says, and its release expects no change to fiscal 2027 guidance. Salesforce shares fell 3% on the news, according to Investing.com. CMSWire counts about $24.6 billion that Salesforce has committed to 16 marketing and customer experience deals since 2010.