Salesforce could be on the hunt for acquisitions to beef up its AI capabilities.
The software giant has recently been in talks to buy Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform for around $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks have not been finalized and could ultimately be unsuccessful, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.
Salesforce and Listen Labs did not respond to requests for comment.
Listen Labs was founded in 2023 by Alfred Wahlforss and Florian Juengermann, who first met as undergraduates at Harvard University while building an AI avatar app that went viral, attracting 20,000 users on its first day, according to Sequoia Capital. Juengermann was previously a national champion in competitive programming in Germany.
They used an early version of what would become Listen Labs to interview users, which helped them realize that using AI for market research would be extremely valuable.
The company’s software automates much of the qualitative research process, which has typically been expensive and time-consuming.
Customers include Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, Nestle, Sweetgreen, and Perplexity. At the beginning of the year, Listen Labs said it had grown its annualized revenue by 15x and interviewed more than one million people in nine months.
For Salesforce, the deal would strengthen its broader quest to make its agentic AI platform, Agentforce, more than just about automating repetitive work. Listen Labs could boost Agentforce by understanding what customers are thinking. It could recommend which products they might buy and craft the perfect pitch for salespeople to close a deal.
If the deal were finalized, it would be part of a wave of AI acquisitions in recent weeks, with Nvidia acquiring HuggingFace for around $12.9 billion and Stripe buying OpenRouter for around $8 billion.
Salesforce has been pushing to improve its AI efforts, with a particular focus on enterprise agents. The Information reported that they considered acquiring HuggingFace before it was sold to Nvidia.
Listen Labs was last valued at $500 million in a financing round earlier this year. Its backers include Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Conviction Partners, and Pear VC.
