Salesforce continues its recent wave of acquisitions by taking over a startup call center company, AI, which originated from Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory.

Salesforce continues to operate in acquisition mode, and on Monday, the company announced plans to acquire AI, a call center automation software vendor that was established nine years ago, from Cresta. Salesforce did not disclose the transaction amount to the public, but according to an informed source, the transaction price for this acquisition is $2.7 billion.

This acquisition reflects that this software giant is making significant efforts to expand its customer service business. This business is facing competitive pressure from startups such as Sierra. Sierra was founded by Brett Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce. As early as September this year, Salesforce completed the acquisition of Fin, a customer service chatbot manufacturer, for $3.6 billion.

Cresta originated from a research project at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and was officially established in 2017. The co-founders included computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, who led several AI projects at Google, as well as Tim and Zaid Inam. After completing a Series C financing round in 2022, the startup was valued at $1.6 billion, but its current valuation is not known.

According to PitchBook data, Cresta has raised a total of over $280 million in financing, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Fund, and other institutions.

Spokespersons for Salesforce and Cresta have not yet commented on this.