We’re only a month into 2025 and the amount of Agentforce, AI, and technology news has been overwhelming. In the past week, we’ve had the highs of the $500B Stargate announcement and the lows of Nvidia’s biggest one-day loss for a stock company in history due to Deepseek (as well as the subsequent semi-recovery due to some inevitable nefarious rumors).
But we’re not done yet – the latest news is a potential merger between two OG heavyweight software enterprise companies, Salesforce and Oracle.
Salesforce and Oracle
Before carrying on the charade any longer, it seems that there are no “official” sources or rumours that a merger or acquisition is currently on the cards for either company – The Information published a purely speculative post last week titled “Why Oracle and Salesforce Should Merge”.
Off the back of Oracle’s involvement in the $500B Stargate project, Anita Ramaswamy, a financial analysis writer for the Information, put together a thesis that involved a merger between the two cloud giants for a few reasons, one being that Oracle is much smaller and cash-strapped than some of its partners in the project, and rivals, such as Microsoft and Google.
Oracle’s recent spending on AI chips and servers is straining its cash flow, with only $10.9B in cash versus $90B in debt, according to The Information. Therefore, an acquisition/merger of Salesforce – likely to generate $10B in cash this year alone – could help shore up Oracle’s cash reserves as it aggressively invests in AI.
However, the article that most people are sharing is TechGig’s “How Oracle-Salesforce deal could redefine tech leadership”, which has fostered nearly 20,000 views on social media.
At the start of TechGig’s post, the article quotes “Oracle and Salesforce have been in talks about a possible merger”, citing the Information as their only source throughout the piece.
Is a Merger Feasible?
This isn’t the first time the topic of Oracle acquiring or merging with Salesforce has come up. Bloomberg reported back in 2015 that Salesforce were fielding takeover offers and Oracle’s name came up – around the time when Oracle were trying to become a leader in the cloud industry.
Fast forward a few years to 2021, and SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin stated in a website Q&A that an acquisition is too late for either company, with Salesforce’s market cap sitting at $123B and Oracle’s at $189B. At the time of writing, Salesforce’s market cap is $328B, with Oracle’s at $476B.
An acquisition or merger today would be one of the biggest in history, with Vodafone’s merger with Mannesmann in 1999 worth $183B ($334.7B when adjusted for inflation).
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff also share a long history together. Benioff was the youngest-ever VP at Oracle, with Ellison mentoring him through his younger years. After Benioff reimagined the software industry with the inception of Cloud CRM back in 1999, Ellison was one of his first investors.
However, this friendship quickly turned to intense competition, as Salesforce started beating out the incumbent with the next evolution of software delivery in the cloud.
Summary
Whilst a merger remains unlikely, it’s an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. With the upcoming gains in AI efficiency and the likely cost synergies of merging companies, both companies would have the potential to become a lot more profitable.
Salesforce and Oracle are fierce competitors, but they also have many areas they don’t compete in, such as Oracle’s Data Centres and ERP. Salesforce has an incredible brand that Oracle – now viewed as a dinosaur in the industry – could utilize.
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