Salesforce said on September 29, 2026 that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, a San Francisco startup whose AI agents plan customer research studies, recruit participants, run interviews and summarise what people say.
Neither company disclosed financial terms. Business Insider, which first reported the talks on September 9, said the price under discussion was about $2 billion, according to SiliconANGLE. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce's fiscal 2027, subject to customary conditions including regulatory clearance.
Salesforce said Listen Labs would complement Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and its wider AI products, and that it would make the startup's agent capabilities available through its platform. Channel Insider reported that Listen Labs would become part of Salesforce AI Labs.
What Listen Labs built
Listen Labs sells software that automates qualitative customer research. Its agents design a study, find people to take part, hold the interviews and then pull the findings together. The company says it can reach a pool of more than 50 million potential participants and run interviews in more than 120 languages.
It also offers what it calls digital twins: AI simulations meant to predict how customers would react to a product, a message or an idea. Salesforce said teams could use those simulations to test ideas before commissioning further research with real people.
SiliconANGLE reported that the platform launched in April 2025 and that customers include Microsoft, Anthropic and the salad chain Sweetgreen. Annualised revenue was about $30 million, a figure SiliconANGLE attributed to an earlier TechCrunch report.
Salesforce said the platform can shorten research projects from months to days, Channel Insider reported. The pitch is that a brand or product team can hear from far more customers than a traditional interview programme would allow, without hiring an agency to recruit and moderate each session.
“Listen Labs has reimagined customer experience, market research, and customer simulation with AI agents that can conduct meaningful research and uncover context behind customer and user feedback.”
Why Salesforce is buying
Salesforce said the acquisition would help companies move beyond traditional surveys and market research, simulate how customers behave and act on what they learn.
“Listen Labs has reimagined customer experience, market research, and customer simulation with AI agents that can conduct meaningful research and uncover context behind customer and user feedback,” said Aman Naimat, president of AI Labs at Salesforce.
Wahlforss said in the announcement that companies had always wanted to hear from every customer but until now could only speak to a handful.
The founders and the funding
Listen Labs was started by Alfred Wahlforss, its chief executive, and Florian Juengermann, its chief technology officer. SiliconANGLE traced the company to January 2023, when the two moved into a San Francisco hacker house after an app they had built drew 20,000 users overnight.
The startup raised $27 million across seed and Series A rounds led by Sequoia Capital, announced in April 2025. In January 2026 it raised a $69 million Series B led by Ribbit Capital, with Sequoia returning and Conviction, Pear VC and Evantic also investing. That round valued it at about $500 million, according to reports cited by SiliconANGLE. Listen Labs said it had raised $100 million in total.
SiliconANGLE also reported that Listen Labs had signed a term sheet with Menlo Ventures for a $125 million round at a $1.5 billion valuation, then walked away from it to pursue the talks with Salesforce.
Salesforce keeps buying AI companies
The agreement follows Salesforce's deal in June to buy customer service automation company Fin for about $3.6 billion, SiliconANGLE reported. If the reported $2 billion figure is accurate, the price would be about four times the Series B valuation reached eight months earlier.
The signed agreement came about three weeks after the first reports of talks. Channel Insider noted that MarTech had also put the expected value at about $2 billion, while Salesforce itself declined to put a number on the transaction in its announcement.
Salesforce did not say how many Listen Labs employees would join, and the company did not publish a headcount.
At around $2 billion, the reported price would be roughly 66 times the startup's reported annualised revenue of about $30 million.
