Salesforce agrees to acquire AI startup Cresta for about $2.7 billion

What happened

The deal was announced on November 2, 2026. Salesforce is a customer relationship management and automation company based in Salesforce Tower, and its products and services include customer data platforms and intelligent agents.

The Information reports the price at approximately $2.7 billion. It is one of Salesforce’s largest bets yet that the future of customer support will be spoken, not typed.

What Salesforce is actually buying Cresta works on the phone side of customer service. The company’s platform does two jobs at once.

It runs autonomous voice agents that can handle calls by themselves. It also coaches human representatives in real time while they are on a call.

When a call doesn’t need a human at all, the voice agent can take it instead. Many of them want automation, but they aren’t ready to let a bot handle every angry customer whose flight just got cancelled.

Cresta’s customer list gives Salesforce instant credibility in that market. Clients include Marriott, Comcast, Alaska Airlines, United Airlines and Cox Communications.