Salesforce to acquire Slack in $27.7 billion deal

Last week's rumors of an impending Slack acquisition look to have been right on the money. Salesforce today announced that it is officially acquiring Slack, the chat app widely used by companies in many industries, including game development.

While Slack has been a front runner in the world of business-focused chat platforms for some time now, it and other similar communication tools have become invaluable for teams working remotely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The deal sees Salesforce shelling out $27.7 billion to Slack shareholders for the purchase, partially in cash and partially in shares of Salesforce stock. While announced today, the deal isn't expected to close until at least Q2 of Salesforce's fiscal year in 2022, pending approval by Slack stockholders and regulatory approval.

Salesforce says this joining of forces will enable the duo to "give companies a single source of truth for their business and a unified platform for connecting employees, customers and partners with each other and the apps they use every day, all within their existing workflows."

"As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organizational agility," reads a statement from Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield. "Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”

As a bit of a fun fact, Slack Technologies as a company was once known as Tiny Speck. During that time, from its founding in 2009 until around 2014, Butterfield's company made a name for itself as the developer of a browser-based massively multiplayer online game called Glitch. The game was eventually shuttered in 2012, though its assets were released into the public domain the year after.

For those curious, find Butterfield's reflections on Glitch here in this 2012 chat ahead of the game's closure.