| Date | Type | Companies involved | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 2nd, 2020 | acquisition | salesforce.com | $27,700m |
More consolidation news now as Salesforce buys Slack for almost $30bn.
The US cloud computing firm has bought the communications company for $27.7bn, with Reuters reporting that this is the biggest single acquisition that Salesforce has conducted in its 21-year history.
This seems to be part of an on-going battle with Microsoft, who not only is a dominant force in the cloud computing space thanks to its Azure business, but also runs the Teams business communications platform. This became increasingly popular during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Pick up the slack
Slack was launched back in 2013 and became one of the most popular ways of organising work online, including in game development and the industry at large.
It’s far from the only solution now, and has struggled to compete with newcomers including Microsoft Teams. Reuters also says that this deal follows Slack failing to capitalise on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April 2019, Slack went public via a direct listing – meaning it skipped the IPO stage. At the time of writing, the communications platform has a $25.01bn market cap.
This story first appeared on PCGamesInsider.biz.
PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor
Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.
