Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Braze, a customer engagement platform, for an enterprise value of about $5.66 billion. Braze shareholders will receive $47.50 per share in cash. Braze sends personalised messages across apps, email, SMS and WhatsApp in real time and serves around 2,770 customers. The deal is expected to close in Salesforce's fiscal year 2028, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.

What it means: The deal shows where marketing software is heading: away from scheduled campaigns and towards real-time responses, with models deciding which message goes out, on which channel and when. Salesforce already has Marketing Cloud, but Braze is strong in mobile apps and in very high consumer volumes, an area where older platforms struggle. For businesses that use Braze without Salesforce, the key question is whether it will keep working openly with other tools or gradually become tied to the wider Salesforce ecosystem. The company says it will keep an open, composable approach, but customers should watch pricing and integrations closely. More broadly, concentration in the CRM and marketing market keeps rising, which may interest competition authorities. For smaller companies, such as Greek online shops or apps, the news is a reminder that value now lies in customer behaviour data and the ability to act on it immediately. At the same time, real-time personalisation depends on careful consent management and GDPR compliance, because more data also means more responsibility.

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Related service: Custom software

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