Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's bid for Slack — which is valued at $17 billion and would be his biggest acquisition yet — heats up his longtime rivalry with Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley writes.
The state of play: Microsoft, which once tried to acquire Slack (and Salesforce), in 2016 launched its own workplace collaboration tool, Teams.
- Slack would extend "the footprint of what Salesforce goes after," said Jefferies analyst Brent Thill. "Not everyone uses a sales system, but everyone can use collaboration. The beauty of Slack and Teams is that it touches everything inside enterprises."
Reality check: "Microsoft’s market valuation tops $1.6 trillion, about six times that of Slack and Salesforce combined."