Salesforce Inc. has agreed to buy Cresta Intelligence Inc., a venture-backed provider of customer service software.
The cloud giant didn’t disclose the financial terms in its late Mondayannouncementof the deal. The Informationreportedthat Salesforce is paying $2.7 billion.
Cresta’s platform uses artificial intelligence to answer customer inquiries. It can also perform more advanced tasks such as scheduling doctor’s appointments. The platform personalizes its output based on each customer’s preferences, past interactions with the support team and related data.
Companies can customize Cresta by creating AI voice agents optimized for specific support request categories. For example, an electronics retailer could develop an agent focused on processing device returns. Cresta makes it possible to customize details such as the AI model that powers an agent and its regulatory compliance guardrails.
The platform can split complex support requests into smaller tasks to ease processing. A company could use one agent to interpret a ticket, another to find relevant help desk articles and a third to scan those articles for troubleshooting advice. Such agent ensembles often provide faster response times than a single multi-purpose agent. They save time by parallelizing tasks that would usually have to be carried out after one another.
Cresta ships its platform with an agent called Deputy. It’s geared toward particularly complex support tickets that require multiple employees to process. Deputy automatically collects the information needed to fulfill the user’s request and then loops in the relevant workers. From there, it manages follow-up tasks such as sending reminders about outstanding tasks.
Another agent provides human support representatives with real-time guidance during customer conversations. Cresta can, for example, point out potential upselling opportunities. It can also pull relevant information from external systems.
The company offers its core support automation features alongside various related tools. A feature called Opera enables organizations to fine-tune AI models for specific customer service use cases. Another tool, Synthetic Customers, provides AI-generated support conversations. Companies teams can use that data to test the reliability of newly created AI agents.
“By uniting our platform with Salesforce, we will realize our full vision at scale, embedding real-time conversation intelligence and agentic experiences directly into Salesforce’s first-class customer service Platform,” said Cresta Chief Executive Officer Ping Wu.
The deal is the second multibillion-dollar acquisition that Salesforce has made in the customer service market this year. It previouslyagreedto buy Fin Inc., formerly Intercom Inc, for $3.6 billion. Like Cresta, the company developed an AI platform capable of automatically answering support requests.
Salesforce’s largest acquisition this year is the $5.66 billion purchase of Braze Inc. itsignedlast month. The deal will buy it an AI marketing platform that can automatically deliver personalized promotions to customers.
Salesforce expects to close both the Braze and Cresta deals in its 2028 fiscal year, which starts next February.
Photo: Salesforce
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