Salesforce to buy voice-AI startup Cresta for $2.7B
What's the deal? Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, a nine-year-old maker of AI-powered contact center software. The company didn't disclose terms, but the price is $2.7 billion, according to a person familiar with the deal.
What does Cresta do? It builds voice agents that resolve complex customer calls end to end, while coaching human representatives in real time and analyzing every interaction. Its clients include MarriottDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Comcast, and Alaska Airlines.
Why now? The deal caps an aggressive 2026 run at the customer-service stack. Salesforce completed its roughly $3.6 billion Fin acquisition and agreed to buy Braze for about $5.66 billion, adding other customer-facing businesses along the way.
What's the endgame? Salesforce wants to extend from digital support into phone calls, pairing Cresta's voice agents with Fin's service agents and its own Service Cloud. "Voice is where service is hardest to get right, and where it matters most to customers," said Kishan Chetan, executive vice president and general manager of Agentforce and Service Cloud.
Cresta chief executive officer Ping Wu framed the tie-up as scaling its platform: uniting with Salesforce will "realize our full vision at scale," he said. After the deal closes, Cresta will keep supporting the contact center and telephony platforms its customers use today.
What could go wrong? The reported price is not confirmed by Salesforce, which announced the agreement without disclosing terms. Stitching together multiple costly acquisitions also carries real integration and execution risk. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2028, subject to regulatory approvals.
The signal: Salesforce is betting that owning more AI tools and more customer interactions will strengthen its platform—and it is paying a premium to do so. The Cresta deal marks its push to control not just the data behind service, but the live conversation itself.
Read more: The Information
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
