Salesforce now owns an AI agent for chat and another for the phone. On 2 November, it agreed to buy Cresta, which makes voice agents for customer calls. If AI answers your phones, or you plan for it to, this deal affects who you buy from.
What Happened
Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta (opens in a new tab). It calls Cresta "the voice-first operating system for customer experience." Cresta's voice agents handle complex customer calls from start to finish. Its software also coaches human staff during live calls and analyzes every conversation. Salesforce names Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines as Cresta customers.
Cresta will join Service Cloud, the Salesforce customer support product. Salesforce did not disclose a price. The Information reported (opens in a new tab) $2.7 billion. The deal still needs regulatory approval. Salesforce expects it to close in the first quarter of its fiscal 2028. That quarter runs from February to April 2027.
Kishan Chetan runs Agentforce and Service Cloud at Salesforce. He said: "Voice is where service is hardest to get right, and where it matters most to customers."
Cresta is the latest in a run of Salesforce deals this year:
- Fin, formerly Intercom: about $3.6 billion, completed on 10 September (opens in a new tab). Fin makes an AI customer service agent. Salesforce says Fin serves more than 30,000 companies.
- Braze: about $5.66 billion in enterprise value, announced on 20 October (opens in a new tab). Braze sends marketing messages based on what customers do.
- Cresta: a reported $2.7 billion, announced on 2 November.
Voice AI is consolidating outside Salesforce too. Last week, Deepgram agreed to buy Daily, the maker of the Pipecat voice toolkit. We covered that deal in AI Radar #1.
What It Means for Your Business
Phone agents are becoming a platform feature. Salesforce will soon sell AI agents for chat, phone calls and marketing under one roof. In our view, other customer software vendors will follow and bundle voice agents too.
Bundles save setup time and make leaving harder. On Salesforce, one vendor could hold your customer records, chat agent and phone agent. That cuts the work of connecting systems. It also raises the cost of switching, and gives you less room to push back on price rises.
If you use Cresta today, nothing changes yet. Salesforce says Cresta "will continue to support the leading contact center and telephony platforms" after the deal. Salesforce has made no public statement about Cresta pricing after the deal closes. Read your renewal terms before you sign a multi-year contract.
Large brands now trust AI with full phone calls. Cresta's named customers run large, busy contact centers. They use voice agents to resolve calls, not only to route them. For a smaller team, that signals the technology can handle routine calls. Think bookings, order status and appointment changes.
What to Do Next
- Map your customer conversations. Write down which vendor holds your call recordings, transcripts and chat logs.
- Ask about exports. Check whether each vendor lets you export transcripts, call flows and agent instructions.
- Check your renewal dates. If a vendor in your stack changes owner, review the terms before an automatic renewal.
- Keep your phone numbers portable. Hold your business numbers with a telephone provider you control. You can then change voice agents without changing numbers.
- Start with one call type. Pick a frequent, low-risk call. Measure how many the agent resolves before you expand.
Our voice AI team can review your setup and plan a phone agent you can move between vendors.
