Salesforce to Buy Customer Service AI Start-Up Cresta for a Reported $2.7 Billion

Salesforce did not disclose the financial terms. The Information reported that it is paying $2.7 billion.

Cresta's platform uses AI to answer customer questions, and SiliconANGLE says it can also take on more complex tasks such as booking doctors' appointments. Its answers draw on each customer's preferences, past dealings with the support team and other related data.

Companies can use the platform to build AI voice agents for particular kinds of request. An electronics retailer, for example, could build one that handles device returns. Customers can choose which AI model runs each agent and set its regulatory compliance guardrails. The system can also break a complicated request into smaller tasks handled by several agents at once: one reads the ticket, another finds relevant help articles and a third pulls troubleshooting steps from them. Running these steps in parallel is generally faster than relying on a single general-purpose agent.

Cresta's own agent, Deputy, handles tickets that need several employees. It gathers the information needed, brings in the right staff and then follows up, for instance by sending reminders about outstanding work. Another tool coaches human support staff during live conversations, pointing out upselling opportunities and pulling in data from outside systems. The company also offers Opera, a tool for fine-tuning models for specific customer service uses, and Synthetic Customers, which generates AI support conversations for testing new agents before they go live.

"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," Cresta chief executive Ping Wu said.

A Run of Deals

Cresta is Salesforce's second multibillion-dollar purchase in customer service this year. It earlier agreed to buy Fin, formerly known as Intercom, for $3.6 billion. Like Cresta, Fin built an AI platform that answers support requests automatically. Salesforce's largest acquisition of the year is the $5.66 billion purchase of marketing automation company Braze, agreed last month. SiliconANGLE said Salesforce expects to close both the Braze and Cresta deals in its 2028 fiscal year, which begins next February.

The acquisitions show how quickly AI agents are reshaping contact centres. That is one of the first enterprise functions where companies can measure savings from automation directly. For large software vendors, buying specialist start-ups is a way to add voice and agent capabilities to existing customer bases faster than building them in-house. It also leaves fewer independent options for companies picking customer service AI vendors.