Salesforce buys Braze for $5.66 billion, a 58% premium over the stock price

Salesforce announced it is buying Braze for about $5.66 billion, including debt. Braze shareholders get $47.50 per share in cash. That is 58% above Monday's closing price of $30.04. Braze makes software that helps brands send messages to customers through email, phone alerts and inside apps.

What Salesforce is getting

Salesforce plans to connect Braze to Customer 360, its system for keeping customer information in one place. The goal is to strengthen Marketing Cloud, its marketing product. Marketing Cloud is strongest in email and weakest in real-time mobile and in-app messages. Braze is strongest in those two areas.

Braze has about 2,770 customers, including Canva, Instacart, Venmo, Equinox, Urban Outfitters and Dairy Queen. These are consumer apps that Salesforce had not won on its own. Braze CEO Bill Magnuson says the company will keep building as Braze.

Why the price was so high

Salesforce is paying about 6.8 times Braze's revenue over the last twelve months, which was $834 million. On Monday, the stock market valued Braze at 3.7 times. Other marketing software firms sat in a similar low range: HubSpot and Klaviyo at about 3.1, Adobe at 3.8 and Sprinklr at 1.1.

The article's author, SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin, says investors worry that AI agents will cut into the per-contact and per-message pricing these firms rely on. A buyer like Salesforce sees something else. It can sell more of its own products to Braze's customers, which public investors do not count.

A strong business that was still punished

On September 8, Braze reported quarterly revenue of $227.2 million, up 26%. It beat expectations and raised its full-year outlook. The stock still fell 25.1% that week, as investors focused on slowing growth and AI revenue that was not yet large.

Costs grew far slower than sales. Operating expenses rose 6% to $170 million. Free cash flow, the cash left after running the business, hit a quarterly record of $21.7 million. Braze held $413.9 million in cash. Customers paying $500,000 or more a year rose to 361 from 282.

What to do

Customers of Braze or Salesforce Marketing Cloud do not need to act today. The source does not say how pricing or products will change. It also does not say when the deal will close. Questions worth putting to a vendor rep:

• Will Braze stay a separate product, or fold into Marketing Cloud?
• Will current contracts or pricing change after the deal?
• Which features will be combined, and on what timeline?

Salesforce has announced several other 2026 deals, including Contentful, m3ter, Fin, Listen Labs and Loops. It closed Fin in September. Braze is the largest of them.