ai and ml

Support bot maker claims its AI agents can resolve three-quarters of customer queries without human help

Salesforce has agreed to buy AI customer support outfit Fin for $3.6 billion, bolstering its Agentforce business as software vendors race to convince customers that bots really can handle customer service.

The CRM giant announced on Monday that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin, formerly known as Intercom, in a deal expected to close during the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal 2027.

Fin's flagship product is an AI customer service agent designed to handle support requests across platforms including live chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Slack, and phone. Fin says that the system is powered by its proprietary Apex model, built specifically for customer support workloads.

"We're thrilled to welcome Fin to Salesforce as we enable every company to become an agentic enterprise," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "Fin brings proven agent technology, a deep commitment to customer success, and an incredible AI team that will complement Agentforce with powerful service agent capabilities."

The acquisition adds both technology and customers. Salesforce said Fin serves more than 30,000 companies worldwide and cited examples of customers using its AI agents to resolve an average of 76 percent of support requests end-to-end without human intervention.

Fin chief exec and co-founder Eoghan McCabe said joining Salesforce would allow the company to deploy its technology at a much larger scale than it could independently.

The deal also strengthens Salesforce's Agentforce business, the company's flagship push into AI agents. Salesforce said Agentforce reached $1.2 billion in annual recurring revenue during the first quarter of fiscal 2027, up 205 percent year over year.

It also arrives during a busy period for the company. Last week Salesforce confirmed another round of layoffs affecting teams including Agentforce, MuleSoft, and Marketing Cloud, while also pressing ahead with the acquisition of usage-based billing specialist m3ter and expanding its stock buyback program.

Salesforce has spent the past two years positioning AI agents as the next major battleground for enterprise software vendors, alongside rivals including Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. While much of that competition has focused on building increasingly-capable AI systems, the acquisition suggests Salesforce is also willing to write sizeable checks for companies that have already persuaded customers to put those systems into production. ®