International Business Machines (IBM, Financials) was among the bidders for Informatica (INFA, Financials) prior to the $8 billion acquisition by Salesforce (CRM, Financials), people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Though IBM ultimately did not close the deal, its involvement highlights the competitive bidding process for the cloud data management firm.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff confirmed the competition in a recent interview, saying, “We were lucky to be the winning bid.” Informatica shares were little changed at $24.13 on Wednesday, while IBM rose 0.1% to $265.52, with a market cap near $247 billion.
IBM's interest in Informatica aligns with its multiyear strategy to expand software and hybrid cloud offerings through acquisitions. The company previously acquired Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019, Apptio for $4.6 billion in 2023, and HashiCorp for $6.4 billion earlier this year.
Informatica had also attracted interest from Cloud Software Group, Bloomberg previously reported. The deal solidifies Salesforce's data integration push as rivals compete more aggressively in enterprise software.
