Salesforce Buys Slack: 'The Hottest Property in Enterprise Software'
Marc Benioff's $27.7 billion bet that Slack was the future of how companies work—and the culture clash with Stewart Butterfield that followed.
"Slack is the front door of the digital workplace, and whoever owns the front door owns the company." In December 2020, Salesforce agreed to buy Slack for $27.7 billion, its largest acquisition ever and the biggest cash-and-stock software deal of that year. The bet was that Slack had become the operating system of modern work. The aftermath—a culture clash, a shrinking valuation, and Butterfield's early departure—became a case study in what happens when a superstar gets swallowed by a giant.
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- Marc Benioff calls Stewart Butterfield
- The integration reality
- Butterfield's departure