December 1, 2020: Earlier this year, Salesforce CEO Benioff addressed, saying it is not a good time to take over companies or talk about the acquisition in this current situation. The company will focus more on the existing business than the investment, as said by the CEO. The company is likely to hit the largest acquisition in the last 18 months with the internal messaging platform Slack purchase.

The deal discussed was for $24 million with 50% cash and 50% stock exchange to buy the company.

Slack was introduced to the market in 2013. Within a year, the internal messaging app gained 15 million users, which was then competed by technology giant Microsoft by submitting the Team collaboration tool got them 115 million new users as it was integrated to the existing office 365 device of Microsoft.

Both Slack and Microsoft have loyalty among different users. Microsoft is the favorite among CIOs who say executives prefer Teams’ price point and integration with the Office products, says Brad Zelnick, a Credit Suisse analyst. But, he adds, “When you speak to end-users, technical people, digital natives, it’s very often Slack over Teams.”

Buying Slack would become the second oversized ticket item Salesforce had acquired over 18 months when it paid $15 billion for Tableau in August last year. Still, observers have questions about Benioff’s about-face. “He said it’s unlikely you will see us do large M&A in this environment,” says Alex Zukin, an RBC analyst. “Lo-and-behold, it’s opposite day.”