Salesforce agrees to buy voice AI company Cresta
Salesforce signed a definitive agreement on November 2 to acquire Cresta, a voice AI company whose agents handle customer calls end to end and coach human representatives in real time. Salesforce did not disclose terms; The Information reported $2.7 billion, according to CMSWire. The deal is expected to close in Salesforce's fiscal first quarter of 2028, which runs February through April 2027.
This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Marketing Tech teams put it to work with AI Writing.
Key takeaways
Salesforce plans to combine Cresta's voice agents, real-time coaching and conversation analysis with Service Cloud.
Salesforce did not disclose a price; The Information reported $2.7 billion, according to CMSWire.
Cresta will keep supporting the contact center and telephony platforms its customers use today after the deal closes.
Free workspace
Turn your Marketing Tech expertise into content.
Record interviews, organize footage, and write with AI on a free trial of the MarketScale platform for qualifying companies. No demo required, no credit card.
Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, a voice AI company whose software runs AI voice agents on customer calls, guides human representatives in real time and analyzes every interaction. Salesforce announced the deal on November 2 and did not disclose financial terms.
The Information reported the deal at $2.7 billion, according to CMSWire. Salesforce has not confirmed a figure. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of Salesforce's fiscal year 2028, which runs February through April 2027, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
What Cresta does
Salesforce describes Cresta as a voice-first operating system for customer experience. Its voice agents resolve complex customer calls end to end, hold natural real-time conversations and handle interruptions. They run at enterprise scale for brands including Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines, according to Salesforce.
The same platform coaches human representatives during calls, tests and improves voice agents, and holds both to the same quality standard. Salesforce plans to combine Cresta with Service Cloud so that each conversation connects to the customer record and to outcomes it describes as resolution, retention and revenue.
Voice is where service is hardest to get right, and where it matters most to customers. — Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM of Agentforce and Service Cloud, Salesforce
Cresta CEO Ping Wu said joining Salesforce would let the company realize its vision at scale by embedding real-time conversation intelligence and agentic experiences directly into Salesforce's customer service platform.
What contact center buyers should note
After the deal closes, Cresta will continue to support the contact center and telephony platforms its customers use today, Salesforce said. Futurum Group analyst Keith Kirkpatrick wrote that buyers should get that commitment in writing, including which platforms are covered, for how long, and whether new features ship equally across them.
Kirkpatrick said the deal gives Service Cloud and Agentforce a production-grade voice layer in the channel where Salesforce has relied most on partners. He also advised Service Cloud customers to ask what Cresta will cost inside Service Cloud and Agentforce before signing multiyear renewals for overlapping voice AI tools.
Part of a busy year of deals
Cresta is the latest in a run of Salesforce acquisition agreements in 2026. It comes less than two weeks after Salesforce agreed to buy customer engagement platform Braze, a deal CMSWire put at about $5.66 billion. Salesforce's newsroom also lists agreements this year for Fin, Listen Labs, Loops and Rune Technologies.
CMSWire noted that Salesforce now owns, or has agreed to own, a text-first service agent in Fin and a voice-first one in Cresta. How the two fit together inside Service Cloud is one of the open questions for customers as the deal moves toward close.
Sources
Featured companies
Your experts belong here
Every story in MarketScale Marketing Tech starts with a company putting its practitioners, product marketers, and RevOps leads on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.
Your buyers live in search and AI answers, so published expert content is the channel that compounds instead of expiring.
About the author
The MarketScale Newsroom reports on the companies, technologies, and trends shaping 16 B2B industries. It turns primary sources and expert commentary into clear, useful coverage for the people doing the work.
