Salesforce is acquiring AI marketing company Braze in a deal worth around $5.66B, raising questions around the future of its existing products and partner ecosystem.
The companies revealed on October 20 that a definitive agreement had been reached, with Salesforce expecting to close the deal during fiscal 2028, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. But while the acquisition is no doubt a crucial milestone for Salesforce’s marketing business, what does this mean for Marketing Cloud professionals?
Why Did Salesforce Acquire Braze?
Braze specializes in responding to customer behavior in real time using signals like app activity, browsing, and transactions to tweak communications across email, mobile push notifications, in-app messaging, SMS, and WhatsApp.
Its customer-engagement technology is going to be folded into Salesforce’s portfolio of CRM, data, and AI products. Braze will be connected with Data 360, Customer 360, Agentforce, and the recently renamed SIforce, strengthening their customer personalization capabilities, Salesforce said.
Even so, Braze says in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that, while they are “excited” to explore how their real-time engagement and AI decisioning capabilities will complement these four layers of Salesforce’s architecture, these remain “possibilities”, and “no decisions have been made yet”.
CEO Bill Magnuson writes in the filing: “Braze will continue to build as Braze. After Salesforce’s acquisition closes, I will continue to be CEO of Braze.”
So, Braze is going to continue as its own entity – for now. But in any case, the acquisition raises questions about how Salesforce is going to reconcile Braze with its existing marketing products like Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE) and the newer Marketing Cloud Next platform.
Salesforce has been developing its established marketing automation offering, Marketing Cloud Engagement, along with the newer Marketing Cloud Next – which it has been positioning as the future of its marketing business.
The two platforms have different architectural foundations, with Marketing Cloud Engagement relying on established tools like Journey Builder, while Marketing Cloud Next puts more emphasis on Data 360, AI, and Flow.
So, where does Braze come in – seeing how it has capabilities that overlap with both platforms?
Salesforce has not yet published a combined product roadmap showing how these overlapping capabilities will be managed, so customers face uncertainty about future product integration, pricing, and packaging.
The deal is reminiscent of Salesforce’s 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget, which went on to become the foundation of its Marketing Cloud business. The $5.66B figure for the Braze deal is more than twice the bill Salesforce paid for ExactTarget.
But the deal does not necessarily mean Salesforce is going to replace Marketing Cloud with Braze, as some have been speculating. Instead, it could use Braze’s real-time engagement technology to boost Marketing Cloud Next’s capabilities.
Salesforce President of Applications and Marketing, Patrick Stokes, said as much during the October 20 acquisition investor call, saying: “We’re really pleased and I think even optimistic about the early response on Marketing Cloud Next… We’ve been working on it for a year or two, and we’re just starting to see customers start to implement and use that platform, which is very exciting.”
He later adds: “As we’ve spoken about on this call, Braze, I think, is going to really complement and extend that by adding more of a real-time and consumer-scale and mobile-first engagement capabilities to this platform.”
What This Means for Marketing Cloud Professionals
MCE specialists should not assume that their skills are becoming obsolete – that nightmare scenario is far from reality. Salesforce’s own product comparison highlights Journey Builder as MCE’s automation tool, with Flow Builder taking that role for Marketing Cloud Next.
Braze brings another orchestration platform into the mix, so someone exclusively building journeys in MCE could see their skills become less transferable than a Salesforce professional who understands the customer journey across a range of platforms. Bearing this in mind, it could be that the greatest career risk could be becoming too specialized in just one platform.
Like other kinds of Salesforce professionals in the AI era, Marketing Cloud experts might need to work on their data engineering skills. Braze’s real-time capabilities mean that people who understand event tracking, customer identity, API integration, and data architecture could become somewhat in-demand. Professionals who can construct campaigns alone might lose out to those who have Data 360 and SQL expertise, alongside those more traditional marketing skills.
Like Salesforce, Braze already has a formal certification system, with programs including Certified Marketing Specialist, Marketing Strategy Expert, and Technical Marketing Expert. According to Braze’s partners page, more than 5,200 certifications have already been completed.
So, while it’s still early days and this is somewhat speculative, it might be the case that Salesforce professionals who also get Braze certified could command a salary premium, compared to those who just stick with Salesforce certs.
For the more senior professionals, we could see the increased complexity translate into increased demand – and higher salaries. We saw this pattern emerge quite clearly with Salesforce Technical Architects last year, with demand growing by 27% year-over-year, and supply up just 4%, according to 10K’s 2025 Salesforce Ecosystem Report.
For Marketing Cloud professionals, added complexity means greater need for architectural expertise.
AI and Engagement
The deal comes at an interesting time for the Salesforce ecosystem. The CRM company is expanding its use of AI agents in marketing, including tools designed to build and optimize campaigns and personalize customer interactions using Data 360.
Braze could become a complementary execution layer, letting AI systems act on customer behavior through the proper channel at the right moment.
For example, an AI agent could spot that a customer has abandoned an online shopping basket, figure out which communication channel is the most appropriate, and then trigger a personalized message. Braze’s event-driven infrastructure could boost that capability.
Braze’s current growth and customer base could have also influenced the decision. The company reported 2,789 customers by the end of July 2026, with quarterly revenue growth of 26.2% year-over-year.
Buying the company gives Salesforce access to its established customers, engineering expertise, and a partner ecosystem focused on customer engagement – along with the technology itself, of course.
The Partner Ecosystem
The deal could also have significant consequences for consultants, SIs, and other businesses operating in the partner ecosystem.
Marketing Cloud specialists might have to broaden their expertise beyond tools like Journey Builder and Automation Studio. More emphasis might need to be given to Data 360, Agentforce, and Flow – with a priority on real-time customer engagement.
Expertise in Braze could also come with a nice premium as Salesforce partners assess how the platform could fit into customers’ existing tech environments. Businesses that are running several Salesforce marketing products alongside Braze could run into difficult architectural choices about which systems should manage customer identity, segmentation, decision-making, journey orchestration, consent, and channel execution.
Consulting opportunities could therefore be created around integration, migration, and platform rationalization. That being said, it does nonetheless depend on Salesforce’s eventual product strategy.
Braze’s current tech partnerships also raise questions around whether Salesforce is going to preserve the platform’s relatively open approach to integrations with third-party data warehouses, analytics providers, and other technologies.
Salesforce has been promoting Marketing Cloud Next and its AI-powered marketing capabilities in recent times, and its decision to pursue Braze raises questions about whether organic development alone is going to deliver the real-time engagement capabilities it wants fast enough.
The acquisition seems to suggest that Salesforce sees substantial strategic value in acquiring an established platform with proven customer engagement capabilities, instead of relying on internal development. This is not the first time it has adopted this strategy, if true.
Salesforce now seemingly has to combine the products without creating more complexity for customers or undermining Braze’s existing strengths.
Final Thoughts
For the moment, Marketing Cloud Engagement is an established product; Marketing Cloud Next is Salesforce’s strategic direction, and Braze is bringing in technology which can boost their existing capabilities. But the eventual product roadmap, pricing structure, and partner strategy will determine whether the acquisition produces a more coherent marketing platform – or leaves customers having to deal with an increasingly complex portfolio.
For Marketing Cloud professionals, the acquisition creates a series of opportunities – and, arguably, pitfalls. Salesforce’s existing marketing solutions already span several distinct products, and this deal adds another to the mix. Increased complexity might translate to increased pay packages for senior staff, but uncertainty around the future can be a hindrance for any Salesforce professional.
