Salesforce said on February 10, 2026 that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cimulate, a Boston-based startup that builds AI search and product discovery software for online retailers. The technology is being folded into Agentforce Commerce, Salesforce's commerce product.
Terms were not disclosed. Salesforce initially expected the deal to close in the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year, subject to customary conditions, and later added a note to its announcement saying the acquisition was completed on March 3, 2026.
Cimulate's team is moving to Salesforce, which said the group brings specialist knowledge of intent-aware and contextual search for e-commerce and retail. Salesforce said the team would support further development across Agentforce Commerce.
What Cimulate built
Cimulate describes its product as an intent-aware context engine made for retail. It combines data from real shopper journeys with simulated ones to work out what a shopper is trying to find, and uses that to return more relevant search results and personalised recommendations.
Le Monde Informatique reported that the company's CommerceGPT search engine was trained on synthetic purchase behaviour rather than on click history. Cimulate's product pages list core search, browse, recommendations, an AI shopping assistant and agentic interfaces among its offerings.
Before the acquisition, the startup counted retailers such as Tillys, West Marine and Pacsun as customers, according to Salesforce consultancy Vantagepoint, which also said Cimulate claimed revenue-per-user gains of up to 14% for retail partners.
“Joining Salesforce allows us to scale our technology and put it in the hands of the world's leading retailers.”
Why Salesforce is buying
Salesforce said retailers were moving away from keyword-based search toward discovery driven by what a shopper actually wants. By adding Cimulate to Agentforce Commerce, the company said, shoppers should be able to find and compare products faster, while merchants spend more time on brand and growth work.
Nitin Mangtani, senior vice president and general manager for commerce and retail at Salesforce, said the future of commerce was agentic and would move beyond simple transactions toward conversational discovery. He said Cimulate's technology would help retailers close the gap between what shoppers intend and what they do.
CX Today described the purchase as a way for Salesforce to speed up the search and discovery roadmap for Agentforce Commerce. Le Monde Informatique noted that Salesforce had expected to complete the deal by April 2026; in the end it closed in early March, about three weeks after the announcement.
Once the two products are integrated, Salesforce said, retailers should be able to offer search that responds in real time and feels closer to the way shoppers actually browse and buy. The company framed this as a move from legacy search toward conversational experiences that understand what a shopper is looking for.
The founders and the funding
Cimulate was founded in Boston in 2023 by chief executive John Andrews and Vivek Farias. Le Monde Informatique reported that Andrews had previously worked at Endeca, the search software company Oracle bought in 2011, and that Farias is a professor at MIT.
In December 2024 the company announced a $28 million Series A led by Spark Capital, with Sierra Ventures, Pillar VC, LFX and Commerce Ventures also taking part. At the time, Cimulate said the money would go toward its generative AI platform for product discovery and search.
Andrews said joining Salesforce would let the team scale its technology and put it in front of the world's largest retailers.
What happens next
Salesforce has not said whether Cimulate will continue to sell its product separately. Cimulate's own website now states that the company is part of Salesforce. Neither company has reported the purchase price or how many Cimulate employees moved across, and Salesforce did not say whether the deal was paid in cash or stock.
Vantagepoint noted that Cimulate was Salesforce's first announced acquisition of 2026. The company has been adding AI features across its products under the Agentforce name, and commerce search is one of the areas where retailers are testing conversational and agent-based shopping tools.
