Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, the voice AI company whose agents resolve customer service calls end to end. The deal gives Salesforce a voice-first front door for Service Cloud and Agentforce — and it matters because the phone call, the hardest service channel to automate well, is now the center of Salesforce’s agent strategy.
Nov. 2, 2026 — Salesforce announced the agreement on Monday. It did not disclose the price; The Information reported the deal is worth about $2.7 billion, citing a person familiar with the matter. That figure is reported, not confirmed by Salesforce.
What happened
Salesforce said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, which it describes as the voice-first operating system for customer experience. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2028 — February through April 2027 — subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Cresta, founded in 2017 out of Stanford’s AI Lab and led by CEO Ping Wu, is the latest and largest voice bet in a busy Salesforce deal run. In September the company closed its roughly $3.6 billion purchase of Fin, the AI customer-service agent formerly known as Intercom, and signed a reported $2 billion deal for AI customer-research startup Listen Labs. On October 20 it agreed to buy marketing platform Braze for about $5.66 billion in enterprise value.
What Cresta actually does
Cresta’s voice agents hold natural, real-time conversations, handle interruptions, and resolve complex calls without a human on the line. Salesforce named Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines as brands running the agents at enterprise scale. The same platform guides human representatives in real time during calls, analyzes every interaction, and is used to test and improve the voice agents themselves — so human and AI handling are graded against the same quality standard.
Salesforce’s plan is to pair that with Service Cloud, so each conversation is tied to the customer’s history and to the outcome it produced: a resolution, a saved account, or revenue. One commitment contact-center buyers will note: after the deal closes, Cresta will keep supporting the leading contact center and telephony platforms its customers already use, rather than forcing a move onto Salesforce’s own stack.
“Voice is where service is hardest to get right, and where it matters most to customers,” said Kishan Chetan, EVP and GM of Agentforce and Service Cloud at Salesforce.
Why it matters
This is Salesforce buying the conversation itself. With Fin it owns a text-first service agent; with Cresta it adds the phone channel, where customers bring their highest-stakes problems and where an agent that loses the thread does real damage. The strategic test is the same one facing every big agent platform: whether two separately built agent products become one system that shares customer context, or stay two products sold side by side. The reported $2.7 billion price — about 1.7 times Cresta’s last private valuation of $1.6 billion from 2022, if the reporting holds — also says something about the market: proven voice agents with named enterprise customers are commanding full prices even as investors question AI spending elsewhere. For Service Cloud customers, the practical question to ask now is how long the platform-neutral telephony promise holds after the close.
Frequently asked questions
How much is Salesforce paying for Cresta?
Salesforce did not disclose terms. The Information reported a price of about $2.7 billion, citing a person familiar with the deal; Salesforce has not confirmed that figure.
When will the Cresta acquisition close?
Salesforce expects it to close in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2028, which runs February through April 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
What does Cresta’s technology do?
Cresta builds voice agents that resolve complex customer calls end to end, software that coaches human service representatives in real time, and analytics that review every interaction. Its customers include Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines.
Will Cresta still work with non-Salesforce phone systems?
Yes, according to Salesforce: after the transaction closes, Cresta will continue to support the leading contact center and telephony platforms its customers rely on today.
Sources: Salesforce (company announcement, Nov. 2, 2026), CMSWire, The Information reporting via CMSWire and Dealroom.