Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and Covington & Burling are advising Salesforce on its $5.7bn acquisition of customer engagement platform Braze, which is being represented on the deal by Davis Polk & Wardwell.
The deal deepens the software giant's push into AI. New York-based Braze, which counts Canva, Dairy Queen and Instacart among its nearly 3,000 customers, provides AI-based tools that help brands optimise content and offers as well as send customers personalised messages.
Wachtell's team was led by Andrew Nussbaum, co-chair of the firm's executive committee, and fellow corporate partner Meng Lu. They also headed the Wachtell teams that advised Salesforce on its $3.6bn deal for AI agent platform Fin earlier this year and its $8bn acquisition of AI-powered cloud data management company Informatica last year.
Meanwhile, Covington's work for Salesforce includes advising on its acquisition of ListenLabs, an AI-powered customer research and human simulation platform, earlier this year. The team was led out of California and New York by M&A partners John Fisher, Brad Chernin and Tomas Rua and Washington DC by antitrust partner James O'Connell.
The Davis Polk team advising Braze was led by New York capital markets partner Nicole Brookshire, Paul Scrivano, head of the firm's West Coast M&A practice, and New York M&A partner Cheryl Chan. Brookshire and Scrivano also led the Davis Polk teams that advised Braze on its deal for Australian customer engagement platform North Star in 2023 and its $325m acquisition of OfferFit, an AI decisioning engine that automates marketing personalisation, last year.
Under the terms of the agreement with Salesforce, Braze Class A shareholders will receive $47.50 in cash per share – a premium of about 58% to the stock's last close, according to Reuters.
The deal is expected to close in Salesforce’s fiscal year 2028, subject to customary closing conditions.
JP Morgan Securities is the exclusive financial adviser to Salesforce, while Qatalyst Partners is advising Braze.
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