Salesforce to Buy Informatica, Run by CEO Amit Walia, for $8 Billion
Informatica, founded by Gaurav Dhillon and Diaz Nesamoney, is being bought by Salesforce at below its initial public offering price
(Photo: Amit Walia, Chief Executive, Informatica.)
May 27, 2025
Informatica announced today that it will be bought by Salesforce for $25 per share in cash, that is for a total purchase price of $8 billion net of Salesforce’s current investment in Informatica. Informatica, based in Redwood City, California, offers cloud data management services for more than 5,000 customers worldwide. Salesforce, based in San Francisco, sells customer relationship management software and has a market value of $262 billion.
“Imagine an AI agent that goes beyond simply seeing data points to understand their full context — origin, transformation, quality, and governance. This clarity, from a unified Salesforce and Informatica solution, will allow all types of businesses to automate more complex processes and make more reliable AI-driven decisions,” Steve Fisher, President of Salesforce said in a statement.
“Joining forces with Salesforce represents a significant leap forward in our journey to bring data and AI to life by empowering businesses with the transformative power of their most critical asset — their data,” Amit Walia, Chief Executive of Informatica, said in a statement.
Walia, 53, has been CEO since 2020. Earlier, from 2013 to 2020, he served in various roles at Informatica, including as President, managing product development, user experience, cloud operations, partnership strategy and marketing function. Prior to Informatica, Walia worked in various leadership positions at Symantec Corporation, a cybersecurity company, Intuit Inc., a business and financial management solutions company, and McKinsey & Company, a management consulting company. He spent the earlier part of his career in India, working for the Tata Group and Infosys Technologies.
Walia holds a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India, and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University.
(Photo: Gaurav Dhillon, co-founder Informatica; Founder SnapLogic.)
Informatica was founded in 1993 by Gaurav Dhillon and Diaz Nesamoney. In 1996 it secured a deal to serve Microsoft, which led to it growing from five to 27 employees. Three years later, it went public through a listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Went private in 2015; $5.3 billion in cash by Permira Funds, a private equity firm, and Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. 2014 revenues of $1.05 billion
Dhillon stayed on at Informatica till 2004. A year later, he founded Jaman, a video-on-demand service. “I was the first person to show high-definition video on a laptop at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2005, which was probably 10 years too early,” Dhillon told ComputerWeekly. “People said to us, nobody’s going watch movies on a computer!”
In 2009, Dhillon founded SnapLogic, a cloud integration solution that helps enterprises connect data from the cloud, software, and local applications. In 2021, the San Francisco based startup raised $165 million at a valuation of $1 billion. It has more than 300 employees.
Dhillion earned a degree in Electrical Engineering from Punjab University, India. In the 1980s, he migrated to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree in computer science. Neither his LinkedIn profile nor the SnapLogic website mention whether he earned the advanced degree, and, if so, from which university in the U.S. In fact, Dhillon’s LinkedIn profile does not list any of his education credentials.
Nesamoney left Informatica in 2002. He is CEO of Jivox, based in San Mateo, California, which he founded in 2007. The company enables brands to deliver personalized marketing to push e-commerce sales on mobile, display, video, and social media platforms. In 2022, Jivox raised $9 million in a funding round, at a valuation of more than $100 million according to Crunchbase
Nesamoney earned an M Sc in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, 1987.
In 2024, Informatica CEO Amit Walia earned $9 million in total compensation, including $7 million in stock awards; in 2023 he earned a total $41 million; and in 2022, $32 million. He owns Informatica shares worth around $84 million.
In April 2024, Informatica shares hit a high of nearly $40. There were news reports that Salesforce was interested in buying the company. The two companies could not agree on the terms of a deal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In 2024, Informatica earned $127 million in operating income on $1.6 billion in revenues. The company’s overall revenue growth in 2024 was low for a technology company – 3% – though its cloud subscription revenue increased by a third to $676 million.
Last month, the stock dropped to a low of $16. Perhaps, the two major stock holders, Permira and the Canadian Public Pension Investment Board, pressured Informatica’s board to sell the company. In 2015, these two funds took Informatica private, paying $5.3 billion in cash. The year before, the company’s revenues was $1.05 billion.
In 2021, the funds took Informatica public again at $29 per share. Permira, a London based private equity fund with $90 billion in assets under management, owns 32% of Informatica shares. It may have wanted to sell as the typical life of a private equity fund is 8 to 10 years.
The Canadian Pension fund, which owns 42%, is based in Toronto and manages $515 billion in assets, with a long-term focus. So, it seems odd that it did not seek any share of the upside, which may result from Salesforce’s purchase of Informatica, by seeking at least partial payment in Salesforce stock. Maybe Salesforce was reluctant to offer stock?
The return on Informatica has been underwhelming for long-term shareholders. The $25 price at which it is selling to Salesforce is below the $27 it paid to repurchase shares during the fourth quarter of 2024. The sale price is also below Informatica’s 2021 public offering price.
Could it be that, over the past year, the prospects for strong revenue and earnings growth at Informatica may have dimmed due to rising competition, amidst rapid and wide adaption of artificial intelligence tools for enterprise data analysis?