Salesforce buys Braze for $5.66B: the firm behind your app alerts

Braze makes software that watches what customers do inside an app or on a website and then sends them a message, email or offer in real time. Think of the push notification that arrives after you browse a product, or the email that follows when you stop halfway through signing up for something.

The company works across apps, websites, email, text messages and WhatsApp. Its AI tools help brands decide which content, offer, channel and timing are most likely to get a response. About 2,770 companies use it, including Canva, Dairy Queen, Equinox, Instacart, Urban Outfitters and Venmo.

It’s a fast-growing business, not a rescue job:

• Quarterly revenue: $227.2 million in the three months to July, up 26% from a year earlier.
• Full-year outlook: about $910 million in sales this financial year.
• Big accounts: 361 customers were each paying at least $500,000 a year at the end of July.

Salesforce wants to shrink the gap between a customer doing something and a brand reacting to it. It already sells Marketing Cloud, its own marketing product, but Braze is built around live behavior and mobile apps, an area where speed counts in seconds.

Salesforce plans to connect Braze with Marketing Cloud, its Data 360 and Customer 360 customer data tools, and Agentforce, its brand for AI agents that can carry out tasks on their own. Patrick Stokes, Salesforce’s president of applications and marketing, said Braze “was built to turn live customer behavior into personalized engagement at scale.”

There’s also a bigger worry driving the deal. Investors have been fretting that fast AI adoption could cut demand for traditional business software, and Salesforce has responded by buying its way deeper into AI. Earlier this year it signed up to pay $3.6 billion for Fin, which makes AI agents, and it bought usage-billing startup m3ter to help charge for its agents, and struck an $8 billion deal for data company Informatica last year.

Salesforce says it will pay with cash it already has and doesn’t currently expect to borrow. Robin Washington, Salesforce’s president and chief operating and financial officer, put the deal in context with a few comparisons:

• The price is about five times the revenue Braze is expected to make in Salesforce’s fiscal 2028.
• It equals roughly 2.5% of Salesforce’s own enterprise value.
• The cash involved is about four months of Salesforce’s expected free cash flow for fiscal 2027.

Salesforce expects the deal to help its growth but to dent profits in the near term before cost savings kick in. It says its fiscal 2027 forecast won’t change, and it hasn’t given a fiscal 2028 forecast yet.

Both sides have money on the line if things fall apart. If Salesforce backs out, it owes Braze $300 million. If Braze is the one to abandon the deal, it owes $191.4 million.

In the short term, nothing you’ll notice. Salesforce says the two companies will stay independent and keep operating separately until the deal closes. After that, Braze will keep its own brand, and chief executive Bill Magnuson and the leadership team will join Salesforce. Co-founder Jon Hyman also still leads the business. Magnuson said Salesforce’s platform would help Braze build new products faster.

The longer-term question is about data. Braze’s whole job is reacting to how people behave inside apps. Plugging that into Salesforce’s customer data products and AI agents could let brands respond faster and more precisely, with less human input. That’s the selling point for companies. For you, it’s a reminder that the timing of that “you left something in your cart” message is rarely an accident.

If you’d rather hear less from apps, the controls are already on your phone. On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Notifications, and pick the app. On Android, long-press a notification and choose to turn off that category, or open the app’s notification settings. Most marketing emails also carry an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Marketers already using Salesforce have a practical headache ahead. Braze and Marketing Cloud both handle customer journeys and messaging, so businesses will want to know which product will own what: where the customer profile lives, which tool runs campaigns, and which overlapping features they’re expected to keep paying for.

Salesforce has said Braze will complement Marketing Cloud, but it hasn’t published a product roadmap. Handled well, the deal could cut steps and integrations out of a company’s setup. Handled badly, it could leave marketing teams juggling one more interface under the same logo.

More automation also raises familiar questions about permissions, data quality and who is responsible when an AI system sends the wrong message to the wrong person.

The deal still needs approval from Braze shareholders and from regulators. Salesforce expects it to close during its fiscal 2028, which begins in February 2027. J.P. Morgan is advising Salesforce, and Qatalyst Partners is advising Braze.

Until then, the companies run as rivals in name and partners in waiting. Watch for Salesforce’s first roadmap details on how Braze fits beside Marketing Cloud, which will show whether this is a true merger of products or just a bigger portfolio.