Salesforce Pays $2 Billion for Listen Labs, an AI-Powered Customer Research Platform

Salesforce has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform based in San Francisco, for approximately $2 billion.

This deal is valued at about 67 times Listen Labs' annualized revenue of around $30 million.

The acquisition marks Salesforce's bet on owning the 'why' behind customers' actions, which its CRM systems have long missed. The company's CRM systems excel at capturing what customers do but not why they do it.

Listened Labs was founded in 2023 by CEO Alfred Wahlforss and CTO Florian Jüngermann, who met while studying at Harvard. The platform automates the lifecycle of qualitative customer research using AI agents to design study guides, recruit participants, conduct interviews, and synthesize findings.