Nothing gets us going like a big M&A rumor, and history has shown where there’s smoke there has often been fire — but that’s not always the case. Last week the big rumor involved Salesforce acquiring Informatica in a deal amounting to somewhere between the $6.5 billion 2018 MuleSoft deal and the $15.7 billion Tableau acquisition the following year.
It would have been a big deal, except it reportedly fizzled over the weekend — if it ever was a thing at all. Informatica went so far as to publicly announce on Monday that it wasn’t for sale.
“In addition, on April 12, 2024, The Wall Street Journal published a story that the Company was in advanced talks to be acquired, according to sources familiar with the matter. Although Informatica’s policy is not to comment on market rumors or media speculation, the Company announced that it is not currently engaged in any discussions to be acquired,” the company wrote in a press release on Monday.
You don’t usually see a company respond to rumors in this fashion, but Informatica felt compelled to publicly state it wasn’t in talks — with anyone.
As Constellation’s Ray Wang told TechCrunch on Friday, the deal never really made sense. “The potential acquisition of Informatica is quite curious as the client base and tech is not cutting-edge. Although it could potentially solve a data integration challenge that Salesforce has had, Data Cloud is already a strong offering, so I’m not sure if this deal makes sense.”
Salesforce, for its part, stuck to the tried and true policy of not commenting on rumors or speculation.
Wall Street doesn’t seem too keen on a potential Salesforce-Informatica pairing
