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Salesforce gains Slack for higher than $27 billion, marking cloud software vendor’s biggest deal ever

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Salesforce is making the greatest procurement in its 21-year history. The organization reported on Tuesday that it’s purchasing talk software developer Slack for over $27 billion.

Through a mix of cash and stock, Salesforce is buying Slack for $26.79 an offer and .0776 portions of Salesforce, as indicated by an assertion. That comes to about $45.86 an offer. Before beginning reports of an arrangement a week ago, which prompted a 38% fly in Slack’s offers, the stock was exchanging at under $30.

The buy marks one of the biggest ever for the product business. The greatest was IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2018, trailed by Microsoft’s $27 billion obtaining of LinkedIn in 2016. A year ago, the London Stock Exchange consented to purchase information supplier Refinitiv for $27 billion, however the arrangement presently can’t seem to be cleared by European controllers.

For Salesforce, the Slack arrangement is the most recent in CEO Marc Benioff’s multiyear securing binge. The organization burned through $15.3 billion on information perception organization Tableau in 2019 and, a year sooner, dished out $6.5 billion to secure MuleSoft, whose back-end programming interfaces information put away in divergent spots.

Salesforce said the Slack buy goes to an endeavor estimation of $27.7 billion, which considers shares extraordinary alongside obligation and money. The arrangement esteems Slack at more than 24 times assessed income for one year from now.

Salesforce, which got its beginning by creating cloud-based programming for salespeople, has drastically extended its compass lately and, en route, gotten one of the most significant programming organizations on the planet, passing Oracle, SAP and IBM just as other inheritance tech organizations, for example, Cisco and Intel.

By procuring Slack, a business talk administration with more than 130,000 paid clients, Salesforce is reinforcing its arrangement of big business applications and rounding out its more extensive programming suite as it looks for new zones of development.

Salesforce’s annualized income topped $20 billion in the monetary second quarter, with development of 29%. Yet, the conjecture for the entire year of 21% to 22% development would speak to the organization’s slowest pace of extension since 2010. Slack is extended to develop 39% this financial year, which closes Jan. 31, to $876.3 million, as indicated by investigators studied by Refinitiv.

On the organization’s profit call Tuesday, Benioff said that Salesforce trusted it could assist Slack with arriving at the following basic phase of income development.

“As you know, they’re basically entering from the $1 billion to $2 billion phase, which I know extremely well, and this is a moment where we can offer a lot of value. We’ve been there. We’ve lived that life.”

The obtaining will additionally increase Salesforce’s contention with Microsoft, whose Teams visit and video administration has arisen as Slack’s stiffest rival.

“This deal will be a major shot across the bow at Microsoft,” composed Dan Ives, an investigator at Wedbush, in a report on Monday. Ives, who suggests purchasing Salesforce shares, said Teams “has been a clear hurdle to growth” for Slack and that the market will currently be “a two horse race between Microsoft and Salesforce.”

The organizations are doing combating in various different regions. Salesforce is the prevailing part in client relationship the board programming, where Microsoft is a far off challenger. The two organizations attempted to purchase LinkedIn, the expert systems administration site, however Microsoft was a definitive champ.

With a year ago’s acquisition of Tableau, Salesforce bounced into the information perception market, taking on Microsoft’s Power BI. The organizations likewise clash in efficiency programming, however Microsoft’s Office suite controls the market alongside Google. Salesforce obtained Quip in 2016 yet hasn’t got a lot of energy against Microsoft and Google.

The Slack turn

Slack has been one of Silicon Valley’s unbelievable stories over the previous decade, organizing perhaps the most stunning turn the business has ever observed.

The organization was initially established in 2009 as an internet gaming organization call Tiny Speck. It was made by Stewart Butterfield, popular in the tech world for beginning photograph sharing site Flickr and offering it to Yahoo. Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners and Social Capital were among Tiny Speck’s initial supporters.

Small Speck’s down, Glitch, was a disappointment. Be that as it may, throughout the span of chipping away at it, Butterfield’s group fabricated an item to assist them with speaking with each other and to share records. They shut down Glitch and zeroed in on talk, freeing it up to clients in mid 2014. By October of that year, Slack had 30,000 groups joined, including at Salesforce, and pulled in subsidizing from Google’s endeavor arm at a valuation north of $1 billion.

Slack’s yearly income beat $100 million by mid 2017 and came to $400 million two years after the fact. The offers appeared on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2019, through an immediate posting. The stock, which opened at $38.50, has been on an exciting ride since, exchanging close $17 in March of this current year, prior to moving back near $40 in June and afterward dropping back beneath $25 in mid-November.

A large part of the volatility can be attributed to Microsoft.

“We have been surprised by the limited success Slack has seen from the pandemic and the rise of remote work,” wrote Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in a report last week. “Microsoft Teams has been able to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the pandemic better than Slack, in our view, and this rapid growth in adoption has hurt Slack.”

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Microsoft plans to incorporate non-OpenAI AI models into its 365 Copilot products

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Microsoft is expanding its flagship AI product, Microsoft 365 Copilot, by integrating both internal and third-party AI models to diversify beyond its reliance on OpenAI’s technology and reduce operational costs, according to sources familiar with the matter.

This marks a shift for Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, which previously highlighted its exclusive access to OpenAI’s models as a key advantage. When Microsoft introduced 365 Copilot in March 2023, its use of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model was a primary selling point.

The company now seeks to reduce its dependence on OpenAI due to concerns about cost and performance for enterprise users, the sources said. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that OpenAI remains a key partner for advanced AI models, but Microsoft also customizes OpenAI’s models as part of their agreement.

“We incorporate various models from OpenAI and Microsoft depending on the product and experience,” Microsoft stated. OpenAI declined to comment.

Microsoft is training its own smaller models, including the latest Phi-4, and customizing open-weight models to make 365 Copilot faster and more cost-effective. These efforts aim to lower operational expenses and potentially reduce costs for customers, sources said.

Microsoft’s leadership, including CEO Satya Nadella, is closely monitoring these developments.

This strategy aligns with changes in other Microsoft units, such as GitHub, which added models from Anthropic and Google in October alongside OpenAI’s GPT-4. Similarly, its consumer chatbot Copilot now integrates both in-house and OpenAI models.

Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI assistant for enterprise applications like Word and PowerPoint, is still proving its value to businesses. While adoption among Fortune 500 companies has reached 70%, many enterprises remain in the pilot phase, according to Gartner. Pricing and utility have been cited as potential hurdles.

Despite these challenges, adoption is accelerating. Analysts at BNP Paribas Exane predict that Microsoft will sell 365 Copilot to over 10 million paid users this year. In a November blog post, Microsoft highlighted its growing traction within large enterprises.

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Perplexity, an AI startup, raises $500 million, increasing its valuation to $9 billion

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Perplexity AI, an artificial intelligence startup, has successfully secured $500 million in its latest funding round, raising its valuation to $9 billion, as reported by Bloomberg. This financing, led by institutional venture partners, was completed in December 2024.

The company’s valuation has seen a meteoric rise, jumping from $1 billion in April 2024 to $3 billion by June 2024 after a strategic investment from SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund 2. The $9 billion valuation now includes the recent funding, underscoring Perplexity’s rapid expansion.

Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI provides real-time information through both free and paid versions of its search tool. The platform has grown to include additional features, such as searching internal files and offering finance-related insights like stock prices and company earnings data.

By March 2024, Perplexity had amassed over 15 million active users. The company also established revenue-sharing partnerships with major publishers like Time and Fortune after addressing earlier plagiarism concerns.

Supported by prominent investors, including Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA, Perplexity AI continues to enhance its technology. The recent acquisition of Carbon, a data connectivity startup, allows users to link apps like Notion and Google Docs directly to the platform.

In a statement, Perplexity outlined its vision: “Carbon will simplify the process for users to connect the data sources that matter to them, enabling Perplexity’s answer engine to integrate diverse information from internal databases, cloud storage, and document repositories. Rather than searching through multiple web pages, apps, or messages, Perplexity will conduct the research, delivering critical insights across sources as part of the answer.”

With fresh funding and strategic initiatives, Perplexity AI is well-positioned for continued growth in the competitive AI market.

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Elon Musk’s AI company raises $6 billion from AMD, Nvidia, BlackRock, and other investors

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xAI has successfully concluded its Series C funding round, securing $6 billion from prominent investors, including A16Z, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lightspeed, and Sequoia Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to approximately $12 billion.

Strategic investments were also received from tech giants NVIDIA and AMD, bolstering xAI’s plans to scale its infrastructure at an unprecedented pace.

Colossus Supercomputer Expansion
The newly raised funds will support the expansion of xAI’s Colossus supercomputer, which currently operates with 100,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs. The company plans to double its capacity to 200,000 GPUs by leveraging Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet platform.

Elon Musk, xAI’s founder, stated that the funding will be utilized to enhance infrastructure, deliver transformative products, and accelerate research into groundbreaking technologies, aligning with the company’s mission to “understand the true nature of the universe.”

Rapid Growth and Market Position
Since its launch in July 2023, xAI has rapidly grown to a reported valuation of $50 billion, emerging as a strong competitor to OpenAI, which is valued at $157 billion. xAI’s growth surpasses other AI startups such as Anthropic ($19 billion valuation) and Perplexity ($2.8 billion valuation).

Key milestones include the construction of the world’s largest AI supercomputer, Colossus, in just 122 days, and its planned expansion to double GPU capacity.

Innovations and Product Development
xAI continues to push the boundaries of AI technology:

  • API Launch: In October 2024, xAI introduced an API allowing developers to integrate its AI model, Grok, into third-party applications, extending its functionality across diverse platforms.
  • Multimodal Capabilities: Grok now features the Aurora image generation model, enhancing its ability to understand, edit, and create multimodal content.
  • Real-Time Insights: Leveraging the 𝕏 platform, Grok offers real-time information with advanced features such as web search and citations.

Grok Expands to iOS and Beyond
To make its cutting-edge AI accessible to more users, xAI is developing an iOS app, as indicated in a recent App Store listing. The app, titled Grok Beta, provides free access to Grok 2, the latest iteration of xAI’s model.

Described as an “AI-powered assistant designed to be maximally truthful, useful, and curious,” the app allows users to:

  • Get answers to complex questions.
  • Generate vivid images.
  • Upload and analyze pictures for deeper insights.

Grok is also available for free through the Musk-owned X social media platform and will soon be accessible via Grok.com.

xAI’s Competitive Vision
Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before departing in 2018, launched xAI to rival ChatGPT and reshape the AI landscape. With significant funding, rapid infrastructure scaling, and continuous innovation, xAI is poised to become a major force in AI, setting the stage for transformative advancements that aim to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

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