AI and security are the focus of latest Salesforce acquisitions

Salesforce announced Thursday it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Own Company for $1.9 billion in cash. Own, which provides data protection and data management solutions, will help Salesforce accelerate the growth of its Platform Data Security, Privacy, and Compliance products, the company said in a release.

The two companies are not strangers to each other. Own is a Salesforce AppExchange partner since 2012 and a Salesforce Ventures portfolio company. Salesforce holds approximately 10% of the outstanding shares in Own. 

Own’s initial offerings focused on backup and recovery. Today, the company has 7,000 customers using its Own Data Platform, which provides data archiving, seeding, security and analytics capabilities. 

The companies hope Own’s capabilities will fit nicely alongside Salesforce’s existing offerings in the data security and compliance area, including Salesforce Backup, Shield and Data Mask. 

Dig deeper: What does ‘better data quality’ mean for marketers? And how do we get there?

Salesforce acquires Tenyx

Earlier this week, Salesforce also announced a definitive agreement to acquire Tenyx, which develops AI-powered conversational voice agents for customer service.

Like Own, Tenyx will extend existing Salesforce capabilities, this time around autonomous agents and its Agentforce Service Agent.

Tenyx’s co-founders, Itamar Arel, who serves as CEO, and Adam Earle, the company’s CTO, and their team will join Salesforce to help further grow Salesforce’s Agent offerings upon the close of the acquisition, Salesforce said in a release. 

The Tenyx acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2025, which ends Oct. 31, 2024.

Why we care. As the U.S. returned from its unofficial end of summer, Salesforce announced it is open for business. 

The Own acquisition is a reminder that CRM users are trusting their most valuable data to clouds managed and secured by SaaS vendors. Customers want to see that data protected, but they also want it available for analysis, which is a tricky balancing act. While major breaches make headlines, relatively minor, targeted breaches fly under the radar, but are just as damaging to the companies impacted.  

AI runs through everything Salesforce does and talks about these days. With text-based chatbots relatively common, the use of AI-powered voice for customer service is the next frontier. Tenyx will help Salesforce grow its capabilities in this area.

Dig deeper: Where to deploy AI for maximum martech impact