Salesforce to Acquire Cresta AI

Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, the voice-first AI platform for customer experience, for $2.7 billion. The transaction is expected to close in early 2027, subject to closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

The acquisition is an outstanding outcome for Cresta and a strong result for Secondary Capital, achieved less than two years after its investment. Cresta is the second Secondary Capital portfolio company to be acquired by a global technology leader, after SAP agreed to acquire SmartRecruiters in 2025.

Cresta has built a single platform where AI voice agents and human representatives work side by side. Its voice agents handle complex customer calls from start to finish, while human teams are coached live and every interaction is analyzed against the same quality standard. Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines are among the global brands already running Cresta at enterprise scale. Within Salesforce’s Service Cloud, Cresta will connect every call to the customer behind it and to the outcome it drives.

“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.

Both the Cresta and SmartRecruiters transactions reflect the core of Secondary Capital’s strategy: identifying category-leading private technology companies early and investing in them as they become strategic assets for the largest players in their industries. As a specialist in founder-led direct secondaries, Secondary Capital works directly with the founders of leading tech companies that its AI-driven sourcing engine identifies off-market.

Sources: Press release from Salesforce; Reuters, citing The Information