Salesforce will pay $5.66 billion for Braze, far above its market price. The deal shows why investors doubt software that charges per user as AI agents spread.
Salesforce agreed to buy Braze, a marketing messaging company, for $5.66 billion. That is 6.8 times its yearly revenue. Braze traded at 3.7 times revenue on Monday, so the offer is a 58% premium. In most business software that price would be ordinary. In software for sales and marketing, it stands out, because investors have been valuing the whole category very low.
A revenue multiple compares a company's value to its yearly sales. Sales and marketing apps have a median of about 2.7 times. Cloudflare, Datadog and Snowflake, which sell internet infrastructure and data tools, have a median of 22.6 times. Growth explains some of that. But CrowdStrike, a security company, grew 26%, the same as Braze and Klaviyo, and trades at more than 11 times Klaviyo's multiple.
The gap comes down to how each company charges. Infrastructure firms bill for usage, and every AI agent makes calls, stores data and creates logs. More agents means more revenue for them. Sales and marketing apps mostly charge per seat or per contact. If one AI sales agent does the work of five people, the tool loses four seats.
That loss has not shown up in reported revenue yet. HubSpot grew 20% last quarter and trades at 3.1 times revenue. Investors appear to be discounting money they expect it to lose later. ZoomInfo, at 2.0 times revenue, has a market value of $1.14 billion, less than one year of its $1.26 billion in sales.
Private investors are paying far more. Clay raised at a $7.1 billion valuation, about 35 times its expected revenue. Sierra raised at $15.8 billion on about $150 million of recurring revenue, over 100 times. None of these companies sells seats to human sales reps. Sierra, for example, charges for each customer conversation it resolves. Investors are not avoiding the category. They are avoiding per-seat pricing.
More deals like this are likely. When a category trades at 2 to 3 times revenue, going public is less appealing, so larger software firms and private equity become the main buyers. Salesforce has also announced deals for Contentful, m3ter, Fin, Listen Labs and Loops this year. It is valuing Braze on the 2,770 enterprise brands it can sell its own data and AI products into.
If you pay per seat for sales or marketing software, ask vendors now how AI will change what you are charged.
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